House Republicans have launched an investigation into the Department of Education's funding of colleges and universities that "suppress free speech," according to a letter from Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.
Delivered to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Wednesday, the letter requests that Cardona appear for a briefing with the House Oversight Committee, of which Comer is a ranking member, to determine what the department is doing "to promote free speech and academic freedom." Comer and Foxx request the meeting take place as soon as possible but no later than Oct. 5.
The letter also lists a series of examples in which taxpayers have indirectly funded censorship on college campuses.
"Administrators at Yale Law School threatened to interfere with one student's ability to pass the character and fitness examination for his bar license unless he apologized to a student group for an email," the House Republicans wrote. "St. Louis University disbursed student fees among student organizations discriminately, based on political or ideological affiliation. Certain faculty at University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University Law Center and Princeton University have been placed on administrative leave or faced threats of termination or indefinite 'investigations' for expressing their opinions outside the classroom on social media."
"This is no way to run an institution for frank and honest intellectual discourse," they add.
Instead, colleges and universities should be places where students and faculty alike "test, develop, and fine-tune theories, thoughts, and ideas."
"Unfortunately, colleges and universities are stifling free thought and expression," Comer and Foxx write.
The assault on freedom of expression is by no means limited to private institutions, and the letter notes that the "proliferation of cancel culture" has spread to public ones as well.
At the University of Washington, a computer science professor was disciplined by the school's administration for refusing to include an "indigenous land acknowledgement" statement in his course syllabi.
Coming just six weeks before the midterm elections, the letter reveals a widening partisan divide over the state of higher education. According to a March poll by the American Council on Education, just 31% of Republicans say that liberal and conservative views are equally respected on campus, while 57% of Democrats say the same thing.
At the same time, colleges themselves have become more liberal environments. A survey from the Higher Education Research Institute found that the number of self-identified "conservative" and "moderate" professors fell by 6 and 13 points, respectively, between 1990 and 2014, while the number of "liberal" professors shot up by 18 points.
Government data from 2019 show that the universities throttling the First Amendment have no shortage of federal funding. That year, the Education Department dispersed $1.2 billion to the University of Washington, $830 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and $370 million to Georgetown.
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