The Paladin Highlights Work of Furman Free Speech Alliance

Furman's student newspaper asks whether the administration is doing enough to address free speech on campus.

The Paladin, Furman’s student newspaper, just published an excellent article asking whether free speech is celebrated or censored at Furman. You should check out the full piece for yourself, but below are some relevant excerpts for you to enjoy.

Here’s a section highlighting FFSA:

FFSA began after Furman alumnus Jeff Salmon ‘72 was invited to an alumni lunch with President Davis to update the community on Furman issues in fall 2022, where Davis explained demographic and financial challenges. After the meal, Salmon wrote Davis a letter, which was published on the FFSA website, outlining his main concerns about the campus. The first was the administration’s look at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

“Diversity, as far as I could tell from the website and what she talked about, had everything to do with race and gender and nothing to do with viewpoint diversity — diversity of political opinions (and) promotion of free speech on campus — so that you could have diverse, robust dialogue, which is really the essence of liberal arts education,” Salmon said.

The piece also shined a light on the perspective of some current students:

Bryant Garrison ‘25 is the Chairman of College Republicans and member of the Furman Conservative Society. While he thinks Furman has a better speech climate than some other schools, he still has felt discouraged from sharing his views, citing classes such as Sociology 101 and an Intergroup Dialogue class about gender expression.

“In Sociology, it was mainly a question of most of the class is taught with certain assumptions in mind, and if you do disagree with those fundamental assumptions, then you’re sort of going to be at odds with the class,” Garrison said. “My professor was very nice, but I also didn’t try to test it.”

Finally, the piece questioned whether the administration’s current efforts are doing enough to address Furman’s toxic-free environment:

While FFSA is publicly supportive of the initiative and the programs included in On Discourse, they see themselves as a watchdog group of the university and want to see the university make more drastic changes as outlined on their Substack.

“We don’t want to just see (the administration) say, ‘Here, you got your statement, and here’s a little program that can shut you guys up about free speech, so move on now,” Myers said. “We’re going to make sure this actually works, that you guys are doing this the right way.”

You can read the full article from The Paladin here.