Sandy Hook Victim’s Father Wins Defamation Suit Against Conspiracy Book’s Editors

A Wisconsin judge ruled that the co-editors of a book that claimed that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax were guilty of defamation. Following the December 2012 mass shooting, James Fetzer and Michael Palecek published a book, “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook: It was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control,” claiming that the federal agency had staged the event to promote gun control. The book also claimed the Leonard Pozner, the father of the youngest Sandy Hook victim, was complicit in the conspiracy, and had fabricated his son’s death certificate.

Parkland Shooting Survivor Lost Spot at Harvard Due to Earlier Racist Remarks

Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland School shooting survivor who stood out from his peers due to his gun support stance, was denied admission to Harvard after the university discovered a litany of racist remarks he made when he was 16 years old. In May, a former classmate released video screen shots of a Google Doc Kashuv and other students shared, showing Kashuv using a racial slur for African Americans more than a dozen times. The classmate also released a screen shot of a text message written by Kashuv that shows him using the same racial slur about black student athletes.

Bakery Awarded $44 Million in Total Damages in Defamation Suit Against Oberlin College

A jury in Ohio awarded $33 million in punitive damages to a local bakery that had sued Oberlin College for libel and slander. The complaint filed in Ohio state court in November 2017, alleged that Oberlin was complicit in supporting and encouraging student protests against Gibson’s bakery following the arrests of three African American students. Oberlin students began protesting the store, passing out fliers calling the bakery “a racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.”

Federal Agency Accuses Kellyanne Conway of Violating Hatch Act

Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President Trump, has been accused of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in campaign politics at work. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) recommended that Trump fire Conway for being a “repeat offender” of the Act. “As a highly visible member of the administration, Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions,” said the letter to the president. “Her actions erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.” At the heart of the accusation are Conway’s recent comments about Democratic presidential candidates in television interviews and on social media.

Gene Policinski Commentary: New Assange Charges Raise Two First Amendment Alarms

The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Gene Policinski, originally published this commentary on June 13, 2019, on the Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. For […]

Columbia President Lee Bollinger Weighs In On The State of Campus Speech

Columbia University president and First Amendment scholar Lee Bollinger writes about the state of free speech on college campuses. Despite President Trump’s claim that an executive order was necessary to […]

Defunding of Student Newspaper Violates First Amendment, Says Watchdog Group

An independent student newspaper lost its funding in a recent referendum vote, and the process violates the First Amendment, says Freedom for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Since The Daily Targumbroke free from Rutgers University in 1980, it has had to rely on funding from the student body, which votes every three years on whether to allocate student fees to fund the newspaper. In order to qualify for funding, at least 25 percent of the student body has to vote on the referendum. But following a two-year campaign by a right-leaning student group to deny funding for the student newspaper, for the first time in 39 years, voter turnout was too low to qualify the publication for funding.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Embroiled in Free Speech Controversy

  The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the latest college campus to become embroiled in a free speech controversy. During a campus event celebrating Israel’s independence, a student held up a […]