Furman Free Speech Alliance has the Right Idea.

Furman Free Speech Alliance has the Right Idea. 

The Furman Free Speech Alliance is an independent alumni organization and a fellow member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. In a January 2026 letter to Furman University President Elizabeth Davis, they engaged university leadership on the importance of pairing strong free-expression protections with genuine viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement. For Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse (DFTD), this letter underscores the growing coordination among alumni groups across peer institutions, demonstrating how members of AFSA are constructively and publicly engaging university leaders to advance the academic conditions necessary for meaningful inquiry.

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January 12, 2026
President Elizabeth Davis
Furman University
3300 Poinsett Highway
Greenville, SC 29613


Dear Elizabeth:


Happy New Year. This is the bicentennial year for Furman. There is much to celebrate and much to reflect upon. The FFSA looks forward to all the plans that seek out alumni participation.


I would like to begin the year with some reflections on the idea of “a whole campus culture of open inquiry,” a phrase drawn from Heterodox President John Tomasi, who joined you at the Tocqueville Forum in October and gave a subsequent interview with the FFSA.


For a campus to support a culture of open inquiry it needs three elements says Tomasi: “First, it [needs] protections for the free exchange of ideas. Second, it [needs] a variety of viewpoints on the campus — among the faculty, students, administration, and trustees. Third, it [needs] constructive disagreement.”


One element alone is insufficient. Indeed, a campus with two of the elements, no matter how robust and imbued with institutional support they might be, will fail to build “the conditions for scholarship” at a university.


Why?


Because “if you have a university that has formal protection for the free exchange of ideas, but everyone there thinks pretty much the same way, you don’t have viewpoint diversity. If you formally protect the free exchange of ideas and you have a variety of viewpoints on the campus, but the viewpoints are all balkanized into the different groups so people aren’t listening to each other, you don’t have constructive disagreement.”


On a campus where free speech is encouraged, where there are true differences of opinion, and where disagreement is looked upon as constructive, there you have what Tomasi calls a “magical process” that creates a culture of open inquiry.


Of the three, the hardest to create is viewpoint diversity.


We know this at Furman.


Your excellent Statement on Freedom of Inquiry and Free Expression demonstrated Furman’s commitment to the first element, a culture of open inquiry through the protection of free speech. Your creation of On Discourse addresses the issue of constructive discourse by teaching skills such as active listening. Taken together, these are critical steps toward creating a campus culture of open inquiry.


But without viewpoint diversity, notes Tomasi, “‘civil dialogue’ risks becoming academic theater: earnest, well-mannered, but intellectually parochial.”


And he insists that in a monochromatic political environment, speech can be very free and dialogue can be very civil, but real inquiry can be completely sterile.


Concerns about Furman’s homogeneous political culture were a key reason we created the FFSA. (See our Mission Statement) The Paladin’s own reporting, along with a recent survey by City Journal, finds that the faculty is far less politically diverse than the student body.


The reason this matters lies at the core of what the university stands for.


As Tomasi has written:

“the goal is not ‘balance’ for its own sake. It is to rebuild the conditions for scholarship: conditions in which bad ideas lose because better evidence comes to light, not because they are invisible (or unutterable); conditions in which students and faculty learn to evaluate arguments they dislike, not just perform tolerance; conditions in which disciplines remain curious enough to notice what they have stopped noticing.”

The lack of viewpoint diversity on campus is a major roadblock to achieving what Furman wants to achieve -- a campus culture of open inquiry.


Are there ways to address this problem? I offer two, admittedly tentative, thoughts at this point.


  1. That you lead a forum on viewpoint diversity, through On Discourse or the Tocqueville Project, or both. Presidents at other universities also struggle with this issue. Invite them to campus, along with your faculty, students, administrators, trustees, and alumni, to analyze the problem and explore potential solutions.
  2. As I mentioned in my last letter to you, the Furman Magazine can challenge alumni to give serious thought to campus issues. Invite Furman professors or write scholarly essays for the magazine on the topic of viewpoint diversity and the mission of the university. This would be an excellent way to start working through this issue, while bringing the expertise of your alumni to bear on this vexing problem.


All the best for the New Year,
Jeffrey Salmon
President
Furman Free Speech Alliance

Where Liberty and Learning Endure

June 29, 2026
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, we reflect on the enduring principles of liberty and learning that have defined Davidson College for nearly two centuries.

Bankruptcy and Higher Education

June 21, 2026
By Todd Zywicki The Wall Street Journal June 21, 2026 Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty. The board began seizing the university’s academic programs—including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials—at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president. The board’s assertion of authority mirrors incoming mandates by the Alabama Legislature restricting the role of faculty senates in the state’s public university system. Predictably, Auburn’s faculty has responded with howls of outrage, decrying these intrusions on the faculty’s authority over academic operations. How could outsiders appointed through a political process have the expertise to make such delicate decisions? I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment. Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction. Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals—such as doctors and lawyers—and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight. Faculties enjoyed substantial rights of self-governance because they committed to higher standards than those required by ordinary jobs. Professors would establish and maintain standards of scholarly integrity, freedom of speech and inquiry, and rigorous dedication to merit-based assessment of research in specialized areas. They policed their own house, enforcing norms of truth-seeking, maintaining scholarly integrity and rigor, and ensuring that students emerged with basic knowledge, employable skills and civic competency. But over the past several decades, commitment to those values collapsed. Surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently reveal fear among students and faculty around expressing unfashionable ideas. Universities have seen shout-downs, cancellations and even violence against speakers. Merit and quality yielded to “diversity” and “equity.” Truth-seeking has been displaced by faddish theories and ideologically charged teaching and research. Professors design esoteric departments and teach niche classes to cliques of activist students while the needs of other students and taxpayers for real education go unaddressed. Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission. At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry. Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you. Mr. Zywicki is a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was a Dartmouth College trustee, 2005-09. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bankruptcy-and-higher-education-4c2b178e

Race Preferences Are Falling Nationwide

June 19, 2026
By the Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal June 19, 2026 The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences is turning out to be a landmark with profound consequences as its influence spreads. On Thursday the famously progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a state program that issued scholarships based on race violates the U.S. Constitution. Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the court that the Constitution requires “that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,’” and that the state cannot “use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” That must have been painful for the activist liberal majority on the court. In a concurrence, Wisconsin Chief Justice Jill Karofsky took some shots at Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2023) before acknowledging that “I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA” and other Supreme Court rulings “when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.” The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty against a 1985 Badger State law that reserved need-based scholarships through a grant program for “Black American,” “American Indian,” “Hispanic” and some Southeast Asian undergraduate students enrolled in Wisconsin’s private and technical colleges. Last week the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a scholarship program earmarked for black University of Iowa students studying physical sciences was “impracticable” under SFFA. State governments would be wise to repeal these discriminatory grant programs, or the courts will do it for them.
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