Fight for Yale’s Future Sends Free Speech Petition to Yale Corporation and Presidential Search Committee

Last week, Fight for Yale’s Future sent a petition to the Yale Corporation and the Presidential Search Committee calling on them to commit to selecting only candidates who are dedicated to supporting free speech on campus as potential choices for the next president of Yale. At the time of sending, the petition, titled Reviving Light and Truth at Yale, was signed by 819 Yale students, alumni, and faculty, in addition to other members of the broader Yale community.

Among other considerations, the petition called for candidates who would commit to:

• Recognize the Woodward Report as the official free speech policies of Yale University, and commit to enforcing them as such
• Collect serious data on the free speech climate, including an annual and transparent survey of students and faculty that Yale leadership can use to make informed decisions to improve the state of free speech on campus
• Institute regular programs educating students about their speech rights during orientation or other first-year experience programs and distribute a printed copy of the Woodward Report, Yale’s free speech policies, to every student before they arrive on campus
• Prioritize true intellectual diversity on campus, including among the faculty where political bias deviates dramatically from the general public, and develop a plan within their first year in office to do so
• Inculcate a culture within Yale’s bureaucracy of supporting free speech and protecting free expression