IF DONE WELL, AN EXCELLENT IDEA – AT 3:18 P.M. ET:   From Breitbart:  

The University of California, once the home of the Free Speech Movement, announced Thursday that it will launch the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement to study First Amendment issues and educate students about them.

The center will be based in the Washington, DC.

“Our nation needs an outlet to grapple with the questions of free speech on college campuses — and what it means for free speech in America more broadly,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a video for the new center’s website.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Napolitano said: “There have been more serious issues about the 1st Amendment on campuses today than perhaps at any time since the free speech movement.

The students themselves are raising questions about free speech and does it apply to homophobic speech, does it apply to racist speech? We have to consider the student concerns but return to basic principles about what free speech means and how do we better educate students about the extent of the 1st Amendment.”...

...So far, the center’s advisory board includes former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA); New York Times columnist Bret Stephens; Anne Kornblut, director of strategic communications at Facebook; Geoffrey R. Stone, a First Amendment scholar and professor at the University of Chicago Law School; and Washington Post columnist George Will. Both Stephens and Will have been subject to efforts at “dis-invitation” from liberal campuses.

COMMENT:  I could do without Barbara Boxer, but, overall, the selections are reasonable for a first effort.  Napolitano herself is a liberal, but a sane one. 

If Napolitano can avoid contamination from the extreme left, and the usual demands for every aggrieved group to be represented, she might actually accomplish something.

October 28, 2017