Saturday, September 29, 2018

Hearing on Intellectual Freedom in America

On September 27, 2018 the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing titled “The State of Intellectual Freedom in America.” At the hearing, witnesses shared "their stories about alleged political bias, including alleged bias by social media companies on the Internet and college administrators on college campuses targeting professors." There were two witness panels, with a total of nine witnesses. Here is the hearing press release. Here are brief excerpts from the witness written statements.

Dr. Mike Adams, Professor, University of North Carolina at Wilmington (Testimony)
The reason I am here with you is that I am a veteran of a seven and a half year First Amendment lawsuit in which I ultimately prevailed against my university. The story of how that litigation came about and how the university responded to it speaks volumes about what imperils intellectual freedom in higher education today.

Dr. Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars (Testimony)
I will have something to say about how and why we have reached a point in American society in which intellectual freedom and free speech have been badly compromised, but first I want to give some examples of what has been happening in higher education. I’ll mention fourteen recent incidents, though there are hundreds more reported and no doubt thousands unreported.

Mike Simkovic, Professor of Law and Accounting, George Mason University (Testimony)
To the best of my knowledge, there are no well-funded embedded think-tanks on the left that are remotely comparable to the Hoover Institution at Stanford or the Mercatus Center at George Mason in terms of their financial resources or reach. Conservative think tanks outnumber and are better funded than liberal think tanks.

Dr. Tim Groseclose, Professor, George Mason University (Testimony)
I currently am a professor of economics at George Mason University. I am also the holder of the Adam Smith Chair at the Mercatus Center, a think tank affiliated with George Mason.

Jim Hoft, Founder and Editor, The Gateway Pundit (Testimony)


Adriana Cohen, Syndicated Columnist, Boston Herald Radio Host (Testimony)
Adriana Cohen Twitter Followers Who Don’t See Her Columns & Tweets In Their Feeds

Jeremy Tedesco, Vice President of U.S. Advocacy, Alliance Defending Freedom (Testimony)
Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter exercise vast control over social media—the key place for the exchange of views in modern life—as well as the online market.1 They have the power to ban users, delete content, block speech from being seen or heard, defund speech they dislike, and far more.2 As private companies, they answer only to shareholders and have so far avoided government regulation as public utilities or First Amendment liability as quasi-governmental actors.

Ari Waldman, Professor of Law, New York Law School (Testimony)
My name is Ari Waldman, and I’m a law professor at New York Law School. I hold a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in sociology from Columbia University.1 For the past 8 years, I have studied how technology mediates our daily lives. I study things like when and why we share personal information on social media platforms, how technology design manipulates our online behavior, how we can make online spaces safe for everyone,

Harmeet K. Dhillon, Esq., Partner, Dhillon Law Group Inc. (Testimony)
My name is Harmeet K. Dhillon, and I am a trial lawyer in private practice in California, with a focus on technology and employment issues. In my 25-year career, I have represented numerous clients subjected to discrimination in academia, the workplace, consumer markets, and in civil rights matters. I have been called before you today to discuss the rampant and systematic discrimination of certain classes of conservative Americans that is occurring within, and perpetrated by, certain elements within the technology industry.


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