Bias Response Team Shut Down at Oklahoma State University Following Settlement With Conservative Group

Bias Response Team Shut Down at Oklahoma State University Following Settlement With Conservative Group

Bias response teams are a tool of the left which are meant to silence conservatives. This is good news.

Inside Higher Ed reports:

Settlement Shuts Down Bias Response Team at Oklahoma State University

Oklahoma State University must disband its Bias Incidents Response Team and rewrite its harassment policy, according to a settlement the university reached Monday with Speech First, a conservative free expression advocacy group that sued OSU in January 2023.

The suit was part of Speech First’s ongoing campaign to challenge university bias reporting systems, which the organization’s website claims “favors students who easily take offense,” and therefore makes “political speech and satire” particularly vulnerable.

“This is a major victory for OSU students, and we won’t stop until ALL students across the nation are able to exercise their constitutionally protected right to free speech,” Cherise Trump, executive director of Speech First, said in a press release Tuesday. “We have won a number of battles against colleges who knowingly violate students’ speech rights and will continue to do so.”

In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, an OSU spokesperson said the university “embraces its role as a marketplace of ideas, and we believe a robust public discourse is a positive contribution to the process of addressing society’s most pressing challenges, which is our charge as a land-grant institution.”

Under the terms of the settlement, OSU also has to pay Speech First’s legal fees, which were $18,000.

This isn’t the first time Speech First has challenged a university’s harassment and bias response policies. It has filed—and won—lawsuits against the Universities of Texas, Michigan and Central Florida in recent years, and those universities also had to disband their bias response teams and rewrite harassment policies as a result.

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