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‘The universities have created ‘misinformation’ centers or tools designed to identify and take down speech that the federal government has disfavored,’ attorney warns

A conservative legal group wants to know what role five universities played in the “censorship-industrial complex” alongside social media companies.

Alliance Defending Freedom announced it filed public records requests to learn about how the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University-Bloomington, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of California Los Angeles may have worked to censor the voices of Americans.

President Joe Biden’s administration worked closely with Big Tech companies to monitor and have social media posts taken down that were critical of the COVID-19 vaccines, COVID lockdowns, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other viewpoints not aligned with the White House’s priorities. Private universities, including Stanford University, worked with the Department of Homeland security to flag thousands of posts as well.

Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

The executive order said that during the Biden administration, “the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”

The executive order said that the United States would protect Americans’ free speech rights in part by ensuring taxpayer dollars did not go toward censorship and that it would “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

ADF Senior Counsel Mathew Hoffmann told The College Fix that during the Biden administration, the federal government helped these universities censor by “fund[ing] the development of censorship tools created by certain public universities.”

“The universities have created ‘misinformation’ centers or tools designed to identify and take down speech that the federal government has disfavored,” Hoffmann told The Fix via email.

The group is “seeking the universities’ records and communications with federal government officials, social media companies, and foundations responsible for granting funds to censorship efforts,” according to a news release.

Attorneys are also seeking “records relating to the National Science Foundation,” which they say is involved in “funding censorship grants.”

The University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, and MIT all received NSF grants to develop artificial intelligence tools to monitor social media posts, as The Fix previously reported.

The Fix sent emails to all universities asking if they had a comment regarding ADF’s public records request. The University of Madison said the requests would be reviewed and it “values and supports free expression.”

The other universities have not responded to the emails or to calls in the past month.

When discussing the unequal applications of university censorship, Hoffmann said that when they censor “it discriminates against people because of their opinions and beliefs. The government set itself up as the arbiter of truth and then sought to stamp out dissenting views.”

“But the federal government should be promoting its citizens’ free speech, not trying to thwart it,” Hoffman said. “Fostering free and open debate is the only legitimate way to challenge opposing views.”

Regarding universities specifically, he said, “Universities should be the marketplace of ideas, not forums to forge tools of censorship.”

“We need transparency on where and how tax dollars were used to censor speech – transparency is a potent remedy for government censorship,” he said.

Editor’s note: The reporter is a former intern for ADF.

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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A computer screen is shown that says “censored”; One Photo/Shutterstock

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