The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech July 27, 2023 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News Why Evolution is True (blog): California community colleges go off the rails with DEI By Jerry Coyne .....[T]he system has thrown its hat entirely in the DEI ring, making all faculty and staff pledge fealty not just to DEI, but to the extreme Ibram Kendian view of DEI. And if you don’t obey they’re rules for behaving as an “antiracist”, you could be demoted, fired, or denied tenure. To me, this is a clear and wide-ranging violation of both freedom of speech and academic freedom. New from the Institute for Free Speech Helen Knowles-Gardner Joins the Institute for Free Speech as Research Director .....The Institute for Free Speech is pleased to announce that Helen Knowles-Gardner has joined the Institute as Research Director. Helen comes to IFS after working for almost 20 years as a political science professor. “Increasingly, the very idea of ‘free speech’ is coming under attack,” Helen said. “I am therefore honored to be joining a team committed to ensuring that this freedom, crucial to human existence, is valued and vigorously defended.” Helen has written extensively about various aspects of American law and politics, including co-editing/co-authoring two books about freedom of speech: Judging Free Speech: First Amendment Jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court Justices; and Free Speech Theory: Understanding the Controversies. Her third co-authored book about expressive freedom, Filming the First: Cinematic Portrayals of Freedom of the Press, will be published in 2024. She is the author of four other books, including The Tie Goes to Freedom: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy On Liberty – the first book about Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, and numerous peer-reviewed and law review articles. Over the course of her career, she has been frequently interviewed by numerous media outlets. Helen earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University and a B.A. in American Studies, with first class honors (graduating first in her class), from Liverpool Hope University College (now Hope University) in Liverpool, England. The Courts Mercury News: Ninth Circuit overturns political fundraising ban for local government employees By Robert Salonga .....A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned a 1970s-era ban on local government employees directly seeking political contributions from each other, spurred by a group of South Bay public defenders who sued the state while supporting a colleague’s run for Santa Clara County district attorney. At issue was a law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976 that became Section 3205 and relaxed rules on state employees turning to each other for political support, fundraising and otherwise, but preserved restrictions for public workers at county and municipal levels. Wednesday’s written decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared Section 3205 unconstitutional, recalled how even Brown’s own staff questioned the law’s soundness before he enacted it. Judge Martha Berzon, writing for the three-judge panel that reviewed the legal challenge, rejected arguments from state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office that the two-tiered rules were necessary to prevent coercion and corruption, and that uniform, statewide oversight over state workers justified the additional level of scrutiny for county and local employees. Reuters: U.S. urges appeals court to lift curbs on social media contacts By Brendan Pierson .....The Biden administration has asked a federal appeals court to lift an order sharply curbing government officials' communications with social media companies as a lawsuit accusing U.S. officials of seeking to censor certain views about COVID-19 and other topics online makes its way through the courts. In a filing Tuesday evening with the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the administration argued that a lower court judge's July 4 decision was overly broad and would hurt the government's ability to fight misinformation on platforms in a crisis. New York Times: Prosecutors Drop Campaign Finance Charge Against Sam Bankman-Fried By David Yaffe-Bellany and Matthew Goldstein .....Federal prosecutors pursuing the criminal case against the cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried said on Wednesday that they were dropping a charge that Mr. Bankman-Fried violated campaign finance rules. Mr. Bankman-Fried was charged with fraud and campaign finance violations last December after the sudden collapse of his company, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He was quickly extradited to the United States from the Bahamas, where FTX was based. But in a court filing on Wednesday night, the prosecutors said that they had been informed by officials in the Bahamas that the nation’s government had not intended to extradite Mr. Bankman-Fried on the campaign finance charge. “In keeping with its treaty obligations to the Bahamas, the government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count,” the prosecutors’ filing said. Congress Fox News: GOP bill lets Americans sue 'malicious' federal workers who conspire to censor social media posts By Elizabeth Elkind .....House Republicans are pushing to let U.S. citizens sue individual federal employees who help orchestrate the censorship of free speech on social media. The Censorship Accountability Act, being introduced Tuesday by Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., would authorize lawsuits against executive branch employees when they direct a social media company to censor or "shadow ban" posts. "Freedom of speech is the bedrock principle of our nation. Unfortunately, many malicious actors, especially federal bureaucrats, are bent on undermining the First Amendment and censoring Americans at every turn," Bishop told Fox News Digital… The bill is co-sponsored by GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming and others. Free Expression Wall Street Journal: The Covid Lab-Leak Deception By Matt Ridley and Alina Chan .....On March 17, 2020, the journal Nature Medicine published a paper by five scientists, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” that dismissed “any type of laboratory based scenario” for the origin of the pandemic. It was cited by thousands of news outlets to claim that the virus emerged naturally. But Slack messages and emails subpoenaed and released by the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic suggest that some of the authors didn’t believe their own conclusions. Before, during and even after the publication of their paper, they worried privately that Covid-19 was caused by a laboratory escape, perhaps even of a genetically engineered virus… The mainstream media frequently cited the paper in ridiculing any discussion of a lab leak as a conspiracy theory favored by racists and right-wing extremists. Facebook censored the topic for a year. Yet now the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Energy Department—the U.S. intelligence agencies with the strongest scientific expertise—have assessed that the pandemic likely had a research-related origin. National Review: Free Speech Crisis at ASU: Event Manager Fired after Booking Dennis Prager Urges State Board of Regents to Intervene By Caroline Downey .....In a scathing Monday letter to the governing body of the Arizona university system, the former events manager at Arizona State University’s auditorium, who was fired after booking Dennis Prager and other right-wing speakers, accused the school of conniving to censor speech and punish employees who stood in its way. The States Gothamist: A probe into illegal donors for Mayor Adams touches a key member of his inner circle: the body person By Elizabeth Kim .....In the world of politics, body people are the often unsung personal aides who keep candidates and elected officials on track of their schedules. They see to their every need while enjoying an unrivaled level of access and proximity to power. There are two cardinal rules of the job: be discreet and protect the boss. Whether and how that loyalty becomes tested is now among the questions in the wake of a disclosure from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office that a former body person for Eric Adams communicated with and coordinated a fundraiser for one of six people who allegedly funneled illegal donations to Adams. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. 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