Basketball fans take a lot into account when they fill out their NCAA tournament bracket each March. Some choose teams based on statistics. Others select the underdogs. And some pick simply based on their favorite mascots.
Most probably don’t take a university’s commitment (or lack thereof) to free speech into mind. However, there’s now a cheat sheet if you do. The Alliance Defending Freedom has compiled a “Bracket of Shame,” narrowing down the 68-team field by selecting those universities with the worst track records on free speech issues. A synopsis of the bracket is provided by The Daily Caller.
So, who made the Final Four? In the Midwest region, Iowa State University edges out a tough field:
Taxpayer-funded Iowa State University goes to the Final Four, though, on the strength of the impressively stifling speech codes which forbid speech that “annoys” and which pontificate that “First Amendment protected speech activities” may constitute harassment “depending on the circumstances.”
MORE: Iowa State provides ‘Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts’ training to local community
No. 9 seed Vanderbilt takes the crown in the West “because it has violated federal law by trying to require nursing school students to submit to abortion training, and because of its strangely hostile stance toward Christian groups.”
Naturally, a California school is one of the final teams remaining with UCLA selected to win its region:
The University of California, Los Angeles runs away with the South regional, though, because the taxpayer-funded school is preventing students from registering for a conservative professor’s free speech course related — wait for it — to free speech. UCLA staffers also intervened at a free speech seminar to remove a book on “Islamic totalitarianism” in response to a boisterous student protest this year.
MORE: An inside look at the ‘Free Speech’ class UCLA blocked students from taking
The University of Wisconsin wins its all. The Big 10 school takes the anti-free speech trophy because it’s a “buzz saw of First Amendment shame”:
At the Madison branch, which is represented in this year’s men’s basketball tournament, students have petitioned the administration to ban a campus conservative group because it invited Ben Shapiro to speak.
MORE: University of Wisconsin offers class on ‘The Problem of Whiteness’
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