FIRE
COVID on Campus: The Pandemic’s Impact on Student and Faculty Speech Rights
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I: Introduction ▲
It’s difficult to find any aspect of our lives that has not been impacted by COVID‑19. Travel, holidays, business, entertainment, and much more look completely different today than they did a year ago. As K–12 and college students, faculty, teachers, and administrators know all too well, education has been deeply changed perhaps permanently by travel restrictions, school closures, and the switch to online education.But COVID‑19’s consequences for education have not been limited to location, access, or, in the University of California, Berkeley’s case, temporary bans on outdoor exercise. On campuses across the country, speech and due process rights have been challenged, too, as administrators struggle to respond to the pandemic. At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we have been paying careful attention to how these