On December 12, 2025, Rep. Greg Murphy, M.D. (R-NC), hosted his 5th Annual Campus Free Speech Roundtable, alongside Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO), and Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), to convene lawmakers, stakeholders, and students to discuss challenges to free expression on college campuses and solutions to support First Amendment protections. The Roundtable is not an official Congressional hearing. However, it demonstrates that alumni free speech groups continue to have influence with at least the Republican side of the House of Representatives.
RELATED: Rep. Greg Murphy Hosts Campus Free Speech Roundtable
Jonathan Pidluzny, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs, Department of Education, as well as the Gabrielle Dankanich, Young America’s Foundation (YAF); Tom Neale, Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA); Steve McGuire, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), Mary Gannell ‘26 St. Mary’s College, and Noah Durham, Regional Manager, Turning Point USA (TPUSA); Alonso Aguilar, senior director of government affair Defending Education; John Craig, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse; Angela Smith, Executive Director, Princetonians for Free Speech; and Thomas Neale, The Jefferson Council for the University of Virginia participated. Courtney Graves, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, also participated.
“For decades, free speech at institutions of higher education has been under attack by illiberal, partisan college administrations,” said Congressman Greg Murphy, M.D. “Students should be taught how to think critically and encouraged to share their beliefs without fearing for their safety or being penalized academically. Further, universities must be held accountable for addressing anti-Semitism with inaction when hateful protests erupt and endorsing egregious DEI programs that elevate individuals based on immutable characteristics over merit. Congress has an important oversight role in protecting the First Amendment rights of students at public institutions. I am encouraged by the progress we have made in bringing free speech protections on college campuses back towards equilibrium and the diverse coalition that is committed to supporting these efforts.”
Rep. Murphy noted that Charlie Kirk was assassinated only 93 days before, while trying to advance free speech on campus.
Rep. Onder, who is both a doctor and a lawyer, noted:
“It is troubling to see the erosion of free speech in healthcare. You would think that the sciences, whether it be the hard sciences like engineering, math, physics, or the biological sciences like medicine, that we would have a certain respect for truth and open inquiry. So we have to have a medical science that depends on open inquiry and free discussion, but I think too many times now we see that medical training, medical students, and even some of our medical journals start to look at clinical problems through a social justice lens. This is essentially the cultural Marxist idea that some people are inherently privileged and are therefore “oppressors,” and then others are the “oppressed,” and one has to remedy those injustices. Then, of course, sometimes it becomes downright absurd, starting to deny that certain people of certain races are more predisposed to this or that disease than others, or to assume that obesity isn’t a health problem.”
Rep. Fine, who went to Harvard, said:
“I used to say a conservative at a place like Harvard, they put you on an anvil, and they beat you. They either beat it out of you or they beat it into you. You came out sharply tempered steel. I came out the latter. But what I found was this predilection against free speech made everyone worse off, including the left, because it allowed them to be lazy in the advocacy of their own arguments. What I would say is if you were so right, then why are you afraid to debate me? Well, now I have to deal with this myself, but I have a son who’s applying to college, and we’ll see where he gets in and where he wants to go. And I have inculcated in him this view that you lean into the debate and that’s, and you lean in the fight, and that’s what you do. But I also think that we have to make sure we do not go too far because now we are seeing free speech absolutists say that criticism of speech is, in and of itself, a desire to shut it down. And we’re the ones who’ve propagated for decades that the truth matters and facts matter, and you don’t get to have your own absolute set of facts.
“And now we sometimes see those on our side put forth in the name of free speech statements that are simply untrue and actually do real harm to what we care about, which is the idea that people be able to go to college campuses and say what they want. So I think we have to be careful. I think we have to demand that we have the free exchange of ideas, but we also have to be clear that the criticism of ideas is not in and of itself a desire to cancel said speech.
“So when people go up, and they say, ‘Hitler is good’, we have to be okay with saying, you know, that’s bad. And saying that that is bad, um, does not mean that we don’t believe in free speech. It just means that we call out stupid people, whether they’re on the right or whether they are on the left. And that is what will make the marketplace of ideas for everyone better for my son, no matter where he chooses to go to school next year.”
Ms. Dankanich of YAF noted:
“Our fall polling data underscores why this matters. Young voters today hold increasingly contradictory views about free speech. Many support the concept of free expression and theory. Yet increasing numbers believe certain political views are harmful enough to justify suppression or even forceful resistance. When students arrive on campus believing political violence can be acceptable and universities simultaneously model censorship rather than open debate, the result is a culture where suppressing speech feels not only acceptable but virtuous.”
Mr. McGuire of ACTA said:
“It’s very heartening to see you taking an interest in this critical issue of free expression on our campuses, which is something that we need to attend to critically for the sake of the future of higher education, but for our country as a whole. For 30 years, ACTA has been working to improve academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability on campuses across the nation. I work on academic freedom. Protecting the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn on America’s campuses requires constant vigilance, and there remains, of course, much room for improvement. Although I agree with you, Congressman Murphy, that we are seeing some positive trends as of late. Although those in the institutions aren’t necessarily all going along willingly with those positive changes.
“We’re grateful for the efforts that you, your colleagues, the current administration, and other lawmakers, including in the states, are making to improve what has become a very dire situation. It is not an easy task, but tackling DEI and discrimination, undertaking accreditation reform, and insisting on academic freedom and free speech on campus are things that we must do. At ACTA, we continue to believe that trustees who bear fiduciary responsibility for their institutions are key to reform. And through our campus freedom initiative, which I direct, we are working with them and others to promote these positive changes on campus. We evaluate the policies and practices of these institutions against our gold standard for freedom of expression, which is a 20-point action plan. And we believe that if colleges and universities adopt these policies and practices, it will create a framework that will promote free expression and intellectual and viewpoint diversity on campus, which we believe are critical.”
For the first time, the Roundtable included a representative of the Administration, Jonathan Pidluzny, who said:
“I think many of us have been working to reform our universities for many years because we all agree that they’re some of the most important institutions in American society. That’s why this administration has expended so much energy working to restore them to their truth-seeking mission. Now, I don’t have to argue in this room that our universities have progressively abandoned their commitment to free inquiry. What I want to underline is that DEI is the force behind everything chilling campus speech today. Bias response teams, academic cancellations, safe spaces, forbidden word lists, shutdowns, violent disruptions, required courses in gened, ideological tests in hiring, tenure and promotion, and the capture of entire departments and disciplines. When the Trump administration took office, major public universities were spending up to $25 million a year on DEI. That’s a quarter billion dollars over a decade, enough to change every positive and negative incentive on a university campus.
“So, what has the Trump administration done to provoke the U-turn we need on these issues? We have sought to create an accountability environment in which rapid change driven primarily by those closest to campus is suddenly possible. We have also provided a general roadmap for the reforms we think will restore higher education to a truth-seeking and country-serving mission. The accountability environment starts with civil rights enforcement. The last administration used its settlements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to push more DEI onto campuses. We look to students to be Harvard as our north star and put universities on notice that they cannot use race to give pluses in admissions or preferentially allocate other benefits and advantages. The same is true of Title IX.”
On the whole, the session painted a dire picture of the status of free expression and viewpoint diversity on college campuses.
