Author: The Speech Axe Team

By Yvette Hacks Ultracrepidarian – “Someone who has no special knowledge of a subject but who expresses an opinion about it.” That’s my word of the day, a word that I learned recently for people who, up to this point, I had referred to as “uninformed opinionators” or more formally epistemic trespassers. In particular, I…

By Honor Brabazon and Vincent Wong  The article ‘Constitutional boundaries of faculty associations: The political line in the sand’, published in the Commentary section of the September–October 2025 CAUT Bulletin, is the latest in a series of attempts to stifle democratic debate and political engagement in Canadian faculty associations.  The commentary appears to have been precipitated…

By Yvette Hacks As we pass through further rounds of campus leader hearing theatre in the US, I want to reflect on an argument that has increasingly been trotted out, linking free speech, antisemitism and DEI (and/or Critical Race Theory) on college campuses, which seems to generate a general lack of trust in university administrations…

By William Cook The past year has seen a wave of attacks from Republican state governors and legislatures on so-called ‘woke’ investments in ESG-oriented funds by state institutions – nearly 200 bills across 37 states in 2023. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance investing, which republican lawmakers have targeted for its perceived promotion of…

 By William Cook In recent years, the immune system has become popular analogy for how speech on campus should operate. The argument is thus: just as our body adapts to better defend against pathogens through incremental exposure, so to do our minds adapt to better defend against “objectionable ideas” through incremental exposure. This argument also…