This story was reported and written by Radio IQ.
A free speech watchdog group has once again included Virginia in its annual report of America’s Censored Classrooms.
Since the 1920’s PEN America has been monitoring freedom of speech in America’s schools and colleges. Their newer project, America’s Censored Classrooms, examines legislative and executive actions which limit that speech. Virginia had made recent past reports for local school boards banning books.
And Virginia made the report again this year, but this time for what’s happening in state colleges under Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Boards of Visitors.
“We have seen some efforts by the governor to try and use executive power to restrict speech on campus,” PEN America’s Jeremy Young told Radio IQ.
Young pointed to long running efforts by Virginia Commonwealth University and George Mason University to create racial literacy courses. Those efforts were quashed after Youngkin appointees took control of colleges boards, demanded copies of the course work and then voted against the classes.
“Virginia’s public institutions should be teaching our students how to think, not what to think and not advancing ideological conformity,” Youngkin’s office said in the wake of the votes.
But PEN America’s Young thinks it's a symptom of a larger problem.
“They’re saying universities should respond to the political whims, views and opinions of the governor’s office and that’s completely antithetical to what universities are and how they function,” he said.
Youngkin’s office didn’t offer new comment on the issue when asked about this most recent designation.
But the University of Virginia was recently crowned #1 for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The designation comes after crackdowns on Israel-Palestine campus protests in the spring that saw 27 people arrested. Charges have been dropped in most of those cases.
