USC launches free speech task force. One member is an anti-"woke" firebrand

A new USC task force will analyze the school’s free speech polices and suggest revisions in a public report, university officials said in a Wednesday email to faculty.

One professor in the 10-person working group has decried the “death spiral” of “wokeness” in academia and is an outspoken critic of DEI policies. Others in the group have accused USC of failing to defend free speech.

The announcement comes nearly a year after pro-Palestinian protests roiled universities across the country, and as Donald Trump’s allies pledge to punish schools with progressive polices that they have accused of stifling conservative speech.

In September, a prominent nonpartisan advocacy group ranked USC nearly dead last in the nation for speech climate. Its report found that, during pro-Palestinian protests, students were notably more uncomfortable sharing controversial political views than they typically are.

That report came just days after USC enacted a policy of institutional neutrality, a move lauded by free speech advocates.

“Academic freedom, free expression, and open discourse are among USC’s core values,” USC’s provost and Academic Senate president wrote in a joint announcement to faculty Wednesday. “Across the country, those values are being tested in new and unexpected ways, and sometimes causing significant disruption to university communities.”

The task force will determine how prepared USC is “to meet emerging challenges” and consider “whether and how existing policies can be amended to provide a more robust institutional setting” in a public report.

A USC spokesperson did not answer questions about the task force’s timeline, or why the university chose to launch it now. The group’s members are:

• John Matsusaka (co-chair) | Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise and Professor of Finance and Business Economics (Marshall)

• Robert Rasmussen (co-chair) | J. Thomas McCarthy Trustee Chair in Law and Political Science and Professor of Law (Gould)

• Hossein Hashemi | Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Viterbi)

• Velina Hasu-Houston | Distinguished Professor of Theatre in Dramatic Writing (SDA)

• Anna Krylov | USC Associates Chair in Natural Science and Professor of Chemistry (Dornsife)

• Morris Levy | Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations (Dornsife)

• Etan Orgel | Professor of Clinical Pediatrics (Keck)

• Dan Pecchenino | Professor (Teaching) of Writing and former President of the Academic Senate (Dornsife)

• Neeraj Sood | Professor of Public Policy (Price)

• Miki Turner | Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism (Annenberg)

Several of the task force’s members have aired strong views about speech policy and the university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests.

Anna Krylov has railed against DEI polices, arguing that they can undermine public trust in institutions and slow scientific progress. In Substack posts, she has decried “wokeness” in academia.

“It will take a tremendous effort to reverse this death spiral, and it will not happen unless more scientists will be willing to speak up and to fight the Woke on the ground,” Krylov wrote in December.

Months earlier, at the height of last spring’s protests, she published an open letter warning of “persistent and escalating antisemitism and anti-Zionism at USC.” Etan Orgel, another task force member, was one of dozens of signatories.

When asked for comment, Krylov directed Morning, Trojan to a 2022 interview where she implored academics to stand up for free speech and avoid being “complicit with the mob justice of cancel culture promulgated by small groups of extremists.”

Around the same time that Krylov decried antisemitism at USC, Morris Levy penned an op-ed in the Daily Trojan arguing that the university demonstrated a “stalwart unwillingness to defend free speech across the ideological spectrum” and “capitulated to a heckler’s veto.”

He said he found anti-Israel content on valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s Instagram page, which led the university to cancel her commencement speech, “appallingly ignorant or worse.” But, he said, USC should not have axed her address.

Three of President Carol Folt’s most senior officials — Provost Andrew Guzman, General Counsel Beong-Soo Kim, and Vice Provost Marty Levine — are listed as “advisory members.”

During last spring’s protests, those officials were frequently first in the line of fire as exasperated faculty criticized the school’s handling of the demonstrations.

Tomoki Chien is a junior at USC and reporter at The San Francisco Standard. He can be reached at [email protected].