Free Speech For Campus president summarizes threats to viewpoint diversity in the University of Wisconsin System

At the July 2, 2025 monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Association of Scholars, FSFC President Tim Higgins was invited to introduce his organization and its mission to WAS members. Mr. Higgins’ remarks were warmly received and are reproduced here with permission.

Professor Whitcomb and members of the Wisconsin Association of Scholars, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today.  I’m Tim Higgins, from Appleton, a former UW Regent and current President of Free Speech For Campus, Inc., a Wisconsin corporation founded in 2019.  Free Speech For Campus is a grass-roots movement that brings together concerned citizens of Wisconsin to promote and protect free speech and due process rights on our college campuses.  For simplicity’s sake today I want to limit my remarks to Wisconsin’s public higher education institutions.

Free Speech For Campus president Tim Higgins

Let me begin by defining some terms:

Liberal: In most Western countries there has developed a broad consensus in favor of the political philosophy known as “liberalism.”  The main tenants of liberalism are:

·      political democracy,

·      limitations on the powers of government,

·      the development of universal human rights,

·      legal equality for all adult citizens,

·      freedom of expression,

·      respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate,

·      respect for evidence and reason,

·      the separation of church and state, and

·      freedom of religion. 

The struggle for social justice has always been strongest when it has cast itself as the defender of liberal values universally, insisting that they be applied to all individuals, not just to wealthy white males.  It must be noted that the general philosophical position that we call “liberalism” is compatible with a wide range of positions on political, economic, and social questions, including both what Americans call “liberal” (and Europeans call “social-democratic) and moderate forms of what people in all countries call “conservative.” Philosophical liberalism is opposed to authoritarian movements of all types…Liberalism is thus best thought of as a shared common ground, providing a framework for conflict resolution and one within which people with a variety of views on political, economic, and social questions can rationally debate the options for public policy.

Social Justice or “Wokeism:” The movement that takes up this charge refers to its ideology simply as “Social Justice” as though it alone seeks a just society and the rest of us are all advocating for something entirely different.  It is also called “wokeism” (due to the belief that it, alone, has “awakened” to the nature of societal injustice.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to miss the influence of the Social Justice Movement on society… Almost every day, a story comes out about somebody who has been fired, “canceled,” or subjected to a public shaming on social media, often for having said or done something interpreted as sexist, racist, or homophobic.  Sometimes the accusations are warranted… However, increasingly often, the accusation is highly interpretive and its reasoning tortuous.  It sometimes feels as though any well-intended person, even one who values universal liberty and equality, could inadvertently say something that falls foul of the new speech codes, with devastating consequences for her career and reputation… At best this has a chilling effect on the culture of free expression, which has served liberal democracies well for more than two centuries… At worst, it is a malicious form of bullying and – when institutionalized – a kind of authoritarianism in our midst.

Critical: This term needs clarification because the woke have hijacked it, as they have many other terms (like “racism”) so, if undefined, it can be misleading.  When I talk about “critical thinking skills,” I am using the dictionary definition; “Exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation.”

Return on Investment:  Return on Investment (ROI) is a term in finance that refers to the profitability ratio that measures the financial gain or loss generated on an investment relative to the amount of money invested.  However, today I will be using a broader meaning for ROI because, in higher education, different investors expect different kinds of returns.  A student, and his/her family, pay tuition and expect a credential that will increase the student’s lifetime income, job satisfaction, and quality of life.  However, Wisconsin taxpayers, those who are not paying tuition as or for a student, expect social, civic, and economic returns on their roughly $1.2 billion annual investment in the instructional budget of the UW. 

In 1848 the citizens of the newly admitted State of Wisconsin told their legislators to establish a public university in the state’s constitution.  The January 1849 first annual report of the Board of Regents to the Assembly noted, “In giving the University the highest place in the education system of the state…the constitution and the laws fully recognized the intimate connection between higher education and ‘the social prosperity and happiness and the perpetuity of our free institutions.’”

Unfortunately, that intimate connection is now being challenged on UW campuses by the authoritarian enforcement of the woke academic orthodoxy.

In 2023 Representative Dave Murphy’s Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities held a series of four hearings to follow-up on a UW System survey of student attitudes about and experience with First Amendment issues.  Students said that they are being intimidated by their teachers and their peers for speaking their minds about important issues.  Some of them told us that they had to reflect the professor’s point of view when speaking in class or even writing their papers – or suffer the consequences.

They told us that professors taught their history classes, or English classes, and even biology classes, from a “feminist”, or “anticolonial” or “non-binary” perspective!

Faculty told us that they were forced by administrators to complete DEI “training modules” that amounted to loyalty oaths.  We learned that job applications for faculty positions require DEI statements.

Free Speech For Campus is concerned that the university is indoctrinating students instead of educating them. 

Today young people are being force-fed the woke line.  They are being told that “the truth is out there” – but you will never perceive it because the built-in biases of your intersectional identity blind you. 

They are being told that “merit” is a dirty word, and that “equity” justifies the elimination of ACTs, tests, and grades…and since we don’t measure anything no one fails, yet no one excels.

They are being told “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will smash my psyche.”

They are being taught to judge their peers, and themselves, not by the content of their character but by the degree of their victimhood.

FSFC is a grass-roots movement that brings together concerned citizens of Wisconsin to promote and protect free speech and due process rights on our college campuses.

Our organization, Free Speech for Campus, believes that there is no possibility of meaningful reform from within.  Legislative oversight is appropriate because the term “quality of education” includes civic, social and community benefits.  These are in addition to the benefits that accrue to the student.  It is the civic mission of higher education that taxpayers support with General Purpose Revenue allocations in the state budget.

At the Murphy Committee’s first hearing, Dr. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill testified that, “…the civic mission of higher education, …is to maintain our pluralistic democracy by preparing students for civic participation as independent thinkers who can tolerate contrary viewpoints and work constructively with those with whom they have principled disagreements.” 

It's important that students learn these civic skills because over 90% of Wisconsin residents, and about 30% of non-residents, who graduate from UW System schools stay right here in Wisconsin.  They are in the pool of IT professionals, engineers, nurses, physicians, accountants, and on and on, from which our businesses hire.  They are also the volunteers who ask you to support the United Way, they help on Chamber of Commerce committees, organize food drives, and serve on religious leadership teams.  The ability to think critically, communicate effectively with one’s neighbors and co-workers, and solve problems lubricates all our civic, social, and business interactions.

Unfortunately, Dr. Merrill also testified that, “The chilling of campus speech is having effects beyond the borders of the campus.  Rather than alleviating the political polarization in our nation today, the inhibition of campus speech is degrading the civic mission of higher education.”

To be clear, the current academic orthodoxy is woke, but Free Speech For Campus would be equally concerned, and the civic mission of the university equally degraded, if faculty and administrators were enforcing a far-right ideology.  Why, in a university system that is obsessed with diversity of race, of sexual orientation, and on and on, does it avoid striving for ideological diversity?   

We must not allow education at UW System institutions to be replaced with ideological indoctrination.  That is a cruel waste of students’ potential and of the remarkable university system that Wisconsinites have been building since 1849.  We must fix the problem by restoring ideological diversity to UW campuses.  Restoration cannot be left to the faculty and administrators who are causing the problem.  It must be a careful, incremental process supported and facilitated by all the stakeholders. 

Woke orthodoxy and indoctrination now trammel inquiry at our state universities.  Ideological diversity must be restored – but not at the expense of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Freedom of Expression.  These must be revived and preserved because they are the tools by which the, great State University of Wisconsin ever encourages “…that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”   

Learn more and contribute to the FSFC mission at https://www.freespeechforcampus.org/