Media

Upcoming forum focuses on student free expression rights

Mary Beth Tinker, the student suspended for wearing an armband to class to protest the Vietnam War, will speak about student free expression rights at 7:30 p.m. March 11 in a forum at Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium. Tinker’s suspension became the basis for a lawsuit that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided that student free expression rights do not stop at the classroom door. The logic expressed by the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court did not sway a later court in 1988, which curbed student free expression rights with its Hazlewood decision.

Media

Press can do better than knee-jerk response on White House memo

Maybe my kids are right and I’m getting more conservative as I get older. Maybe my ACLU buddies have reason to wonder if I’ve strayed from the path of founder Roger Baldwin. Or maybe it’s been too many years since I was in the White House press room. But as I listened this week to the White House press briefing, I was irritated by the press’ attitude that President Obama’s decision to kill any American citizens plotting attacks on the United States was comparable to President George W. Bush’s authorization of the torture of captured al-Qaida operatives.