In 2021 three Cornell alumni started the Cornell Free Speech Alliance in an attempt to return free speech, viewpoint diversity and academic freedom to Cornell.  We thought we were operating in a vacuum but soon learned there were other fledgling alumni groups with similar concerns about the direction of higher education. More importantly, we recognized that even if we were successful at Cornell, our efforts would fail unless all universities were able to recapture their reason for being -- i.e., to seek truth and inspire the youth of America to learn how to think, not what to think.   AFSA became the catalyst to connect all of these alumni groups, share information and advocate for the improvement of all of higher education.  Its mission is now greater than supporting the interests of a few thousand alumni.  AFSA is arguably fighting for the survival of Western Civilization!

As co-founder and president of Princetonians for Free Speech and one of many co-founders of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, I find it extremely helpful to our cause to have close and cooperative alliances with AFSA, its other members, and a few other groups on and off campus. We are part of a rising movement, and movements do better when organized. We learn a lot from our allies about how to run our organization, from the technical tax stuff to having successful on-campus events. And at a time when our cause sometimes feels like an uphill battle, it helps our morale to know that we have worthy, like-minded allies.

AFSA provided us invaluable assistance in organizing Harvard Alumni for Free Speech. Their guidance and experience were key to getting HAFFS off the ground.  We continue to benefit as an active AFSA member through opportunities to share ideas and best practices with other alumni groups, and more generally from being a member of a community that shares our commitments to free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity.

When asked to help launch the Alumni Free Speech Alliance in 2021, I was immediately impressed with the opportunity to create a national network connecting my group, The Generals Redoubt, consisting of Washington and Lee University alums, with like-minded alumni around the nation. AFSA holds great promise to scale resources aimed at rescuing higher education from itself. For our group, it adds extra focus to emphasize open discourse to the administrative assault on our history, values and traditions that is rapidly eroding alumni support. At monthly Generals Redoubt board meetings, I report on the latest AFSA developments. Its efforts provide inspirational energy to our work and offers a growing network for idea sharing with AFSA's growing confederation; all entities seeking the return of American higher education to its traditional roots.

I believe that the greatest threats to our cherished American freedoms and the American way-of-life are the anti-meritocratic policies promoting groupthink, monoculture, bias, and censorship now dominating the educational environment within our leading US universities. With on-campus administrations, faculty, and students now consistently promoting anti-American values, university alumni may represent the last best hope to save our nation and to preserve its founding principles. The problems within our US universities are now huge – and no alumni group can alone turn the growing tide of university anti-Americanism. AFSA is a closely aligned alliance of alumni from many universities whose purpose is to work collectively to turn back the tide of intolerance and discrimination now prevalent on US college campuses. AFSA is an essential organization which is engaged in the fight to preserve our American freedoms. AFSA is indispensable. This is why Cornell Free peech Alliance is a founding member of AFSA.

As co-chair of our membership committee and an inaugural AFSA founder, I’d love to see our effort inspire you! I’ve been a college recruiter for 40 years and have had the unique comparison view of students’ quantitative, conceptual and interactive skills over time. In the past 10-15 years, there’s been a dramatic decline in all these capabilities. Do you know 1 in 8 college kids are now fired their first week of work? Without free speech, they don’t know what they don’t know and can’t have a healthy dialogue to learn. Come join our effort and see what a dedicated alumni group can do to change their lives on your college campus. You’d be astounded.

I am a co-founder of The Jefferson Council for the University of Virginia, one of the inaugural AFSA chapters along with Cornell, Davidson, Princeton, and Washington & Lee. It is valuable to have a nationally focused organization complement the efforts of our individual alumni groups since we face many of the same challenges. AFSA chapters provide each other philosophical support as well as positive changes we have effectuated with our alma maters that establish governance practices and legal precedents that we all can emulate.

We at UNC Alumni Free Speech could not have gotten started from a stopped position to speeding at 60 MPH in just six seconds (well, months) without the hands on, expert help and guidance of AFSA national and the many other university chapters. We make each other much better as leaders of a critical new movement that’s picking up steam every day. When we got started at UNC Chapel Hill, we assumed we would be swimming upstream – totally! The exact opposite happened. We found the administration, board, and a significant number of faculty members welcomed us. Not to mention students who want free speech back in their universities again. As an alum, do you love your school and want to help save it from near-totalitarian dogma that cancels every free thought faculty and students generate? You need to start an AFSA chapter at your school. It’s just that simple, and it’s easy to do.

The MIT Free Speech Alliance affiliated with AFSA shortly after its founding. It is vital to know that we are not a lonely voice on our campus, but rather part of a national movement with shared objectives. Moreover, we have ready access to the experience of other chapters from which we have garnered good ideas and best practices to promote and refer to in our local dialog with our alumni, faculty, students, and administration. AFSA membership is vital to our mission.