UT disbands campus speech police group

 Red States:

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From the Journal:

“Students could anonymously report their professors and peers for ‘bias incidents’ to the Campus Climate Response Team, which would investigate and threaten disciplinary referrals and ‘restorative justice’ meetings with administrators. The university gave several examples of what constitutes an act of bias, including ‘faculty commentary in the classroom perceived as derogatory and insensitive,’ and other behavior open to highly subjective judgments about what is offensive.”

The Journal credited Speech First, a nonprofit group that sued the university on behalf of students in 2018, alleging that officials “created an elaborate investigatory and disciplinary apparatus to suppress, punish, and deter speech that other students deem ‘offensive,’ ‘biased,’ ‘uncivil,’ or ‘rude.’”

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2019. University spokesman J.B. Bird referenced the court’s decision on Wednesday, stating that there was “no evidence students were disciplined, sanctioned or investigated for their speech” and that, “to the contrary,” there was “strong evidence of the university protecting the speech rights of conservative students and guests on campus.”

However, Speech First appealed the decision and the “Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the ruling and remanded the case back to the district court,” according to the Journal.

Circuit Court Judge Edith Jones slammed the bias-response team, arguing that it was “clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.”

Now, the university’s administrators have agreed to dissolve the team as part of the settlement and will also alter polices designed to squelch speech. They are lifting the ban on “uncivil behaviors and language that interfere.” They are also removing a definition of “verbal harassment” that barred “ridicule” or “personal attacks.”

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The university can still alter, or create new rules regarding speech on campus. It can also create a new team. But it is apparent that the lawsuit has made it so that they cannot brazenly step on free speech on campus for political purposes. The progressives in charge will surely attempt to find other ways to suppress opposing views, but it won’t be nearly as effective as it was previously.

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This is a good start at canceling the cancel culture on campus.  Students and faculty should be able to debate the issues of the day.  Censorship is a disease that has infected institutions from the campus to big tech.  It is antithetical to free speech in the US.