Praise for the CC, CI in FIRE's Weekly Roundup

Last month, Charles Johnson wrote an article for the Claremont Independent, discussing independent filmmaker Peter Musurlian and how CGU threatened him with a lawsuit. Musurlian uploaded a video on YouTube of a CGU talk featuring Turkish Diplomat, R. Hakan Tekin:

The lecture, "The Role and Challenges of Turkey in a Globalizing World," took place on June 10 and was open to the public; Musurlian, who filmed the talk for a local news network, felt he had every right to be there. "I was filming openly and even asked a question," Musurlian said, calling the experience "very pleasant." "I never expected to be intimidated by CGU's attorney."

But intimidated he was. After a stern conversation with Berra, Musurlian created a website, Claremontgenocideuniversity.com, where he put up all of his correspondence with the Santa Monica lawyer, the promotional material used before the lecture, and an open letter to President Klitgaard reminding him of the press freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment.

FIRE's Brandon Stewart wrote an article on September 5 in The Torch on Charles's article and the worrisome trend of free speech violations at the Claremont Colleges. FIRE has been instrumental in defending individual liberty on college campuses across the country. By monitoring the situation here at the 5C's, FIRE reminds the administration that the Freedom of Speech is explicitly protected on college campuses -- public and private -- by California's Leonard Law.

In another article in The Torch, Peter Bonilla praises the Claremont Conservative and the success of FIRE's speech code widgets. Bonilla points to the beneficial exposure of FIRE's widgets on the Claremont Conservative's home page. He writes,

Finally, as Brandon noted earlier in the week, FIRE's work was discussed at length in an astute column in The Claremont Independent by Claremont McKenna College student (and CFN member) Charles Johnson. Since Brandon has already written a nice treatment of the article this week, I'll merely point you to his post and advise you to give Johnson's article the thorough read it deserves.

I would be remiss, however, not to point you to the Claremont Conservative news blog, to which Johnson contributes, and which also features his article. There you'll find Claremont McKenna's Speech Code Widget, as well as the widgets for Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, and Scripps College. (Pitzer College, the fifth of the Claremont Colleges, is not rated.) Since posting the widgets on the Claremont Conservative, views on the colleges' Spotlight pages have increased dramatically, a testament to the widgets' ability to raise awareness of America's college speech codes. Other students would do well to follow the Claremont Conservative's lead.

The Claremont Conservative is grateful to FIRE for helping protect freedom of speech at the Claremont Colleges. Like FIRE, we will continue to monitor the situation.