FIRE is pleased to announce its third annual "Freedom in Academia" essay contest.

FIRE's mission states in part that we exist "to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to rights on our campuses." For this purpose, high school students from across the country who will be graduating in 2011 and attending college the following fall are invited to write an in-depth essay explaining why free speech and First Amendment rights are crucial to higher education and how abuses of these rights are contrary to the purpose of a university education. Last year's contest was a huge success, garnering 2,700 essay submissions from students across the country.

With orientation sessions, meet-and-greets, and motivational speeches, college and university leaders are ushering in the Class of 2014. One such welcome message, delivered this past Sunday by Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz to the school's freshman class, caught FIRE's attention. Here's a portion of Reinharz's address, as reported by the Boston Globe:

"The next four years of your life are going to be, in my view, the best of your life. They are going to be a real new beginning for all of you," Reinharz said to students and their families, according to a statement released by the university. "You're going to be able to debate the great questions that have been debated by every generation before you and new ones that my generation and your parents['] generation never even dreamed of."

That is, unless these debates happen to offend someone's sensibilities. It is well-documented fact that, under the current Brandeis administration, the wrong words can be grounds to shut down debate. This was made especially apparent in the case of Brandeis Professor Donald Hindley, whose critique of the racial epithet "wetbacks" in his Latin American politics course led to his being found guilty of harassment in 2008.

For the second time in the past two years, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has decisively ruled in favor of free speech and against the purveyors of speech codes in our nation's universities. In a ruling that deepens and expands the Third Circuit's prior ruling in DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008) in several important respects (as Erica noted in depth earlier), the court invalidated key portions of the University of the Virgin Islands' speech codes--a major victory for free speech rights. Read more about this ruling--also briefly discussed at The Volokh Conspiracy, as well as the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed--here in the coming days as the higher education and legal communities ponder this latest strike against speech codes.

In the continuing debate over the less-welcome ruling in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Heartland Institute has made a welcome contribution, informed largely by a podcast interview with FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. You can read it here.

Finally, as we blogged earlier, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi) has tackled Isaac Rosenbloom's case at Hinds Community College in Mississippi yet again, in an article that turns its focus to the speech codes in the state of Mississippi as a whole. (Spoiler: they don't do well). It's a welcome bit of sunlight as Mississippi students get ready to hit the books for another semester.