Kiera Riley
Arizona Capitol Times
Five Republicans and a lone Democrat offered broad recommendations to strengthen free speech protections on university campuses at the final meeting of a joint committee convened to cover a conflict over a conservative speaking engagement at ASU last year.
Though an action item to pull university funding failed to make it into the formal recommendations, Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, independently made the charge to target university budgets, though he left the details to be figured out down the line.
“I’m not comfortable in just legislatively doing something. I think the only way we can get to them is through their pocketbook,” Kern said.
The four recommendations call on public universities to ensure their free expression policies have built-in accountability measures to ensure enforcement, apply to students, administrators, faculty and staff and shield student grades from taking any impact for participating in protected speech.
A spokesperson for ASU said in a prepared statement they already adhere to the recommendations forwarded by the committee.
The committee further asked the Arizona Board of Regents to ensure public universities are “faithfully executing and enforcing their duties.”
Kern convened the committee in July after a February speaking engagement at ASU featuring conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk stirred a letter of protest from most of Honors College faculty and later led to the closure of the host center, the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, after the namesake donor pulled his funding and brought the executive director’s job with it.
The first hearing brought testimony from Prager, former center director Ann Atkinson and university representatives.
