It looks like we struck a nerve at one of the largest universities in the United States. Last week, the Free Enterprise Club published an article on Arizona State University’s (ASU) failure to uphold free speech. The article came in the aftermath of an event held by the T.W. Lewis Center for personal development—a center of the Barrett Honors College—that featured prominent conservative speakers like Robert Kiyosaki, Dennis Prager, and Charlie Kirk.
While the event was allowed to proceed, it faced a campaign from 39 of the 47 faculty from the honors college who tried to shut it down. Then, in the months following the event, the center was not only dissolved, but two staff members lost their jobs. Now, ASU has offered a “fact check” of our article in a desperate attempt to save face. And as you might expect, it’s another swing and miss.
It begins by referencing our organization as the Free Enterprise “Club.” Yes. That’s right. It put “Club” in scare quotes for whatever reason, as if that may not be part of the name of our organization. But it has inspired us to consider recognizing ASU as Arizona State “University” moving forward. After all, universities are supposed to be institutions of higher education, and ASU appears to be trending away from that mission to fulfill its desired woke agenda.
Speaking of agendas, ASU also accuses the Club of being “a non-profit, political organization with a political agenda which utilizes what have now become standard political techniques of making brash, attention-getting statements and accusations in a well-orchestrated campaign to secure more social media engagement, more media hits and more donations.”
We’re certainly glad our article got the attention of ASU and others. That is, after all, what an article is supposed to do. And it’s in line with our mission. Since 2005, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club has been the leading organization in the state dedicated to advancing a pro-growth, limited government agenda in Arizona. And through active lobbying, litigation, and our extensive grassroots network, the Club has secured numerous policy victories in the state, including historic income tax cuts, expanded school choice, and protection of free speech. So, yes, when we see violations of free speech, we call them out. We want to get the attention of the people of Arizona, so they know about it and can speak up. And once again, this strategy proved to be a success as the state legislature holds a hearing today about free expression at Arizona’s public universities.
But what about the content of the article itself? What did ASU specifically refute or identify as factually incorrect? We would like to call out a few particular highlights from their alleged “fact check”:
This is how ASU responded to this particular sentence. No talking points. No arguments. Just a link to the “About” page on its website that says nothing about its commitment to free speech.
Some ASU faculty members disagreed? We’re talking about more than 75 percent of the Barrett Honors College faculty signing on to a letter condemning the event and calling the speakers “purveyors of hate.” That’s certainly more than “some.” And ASU’s claim that it is “unaware that students were ‘recruited’ by faculty to oppose [the event],” is laughable when we know at least one faculty member emailed the condemnation letter to her students.
This is just another carefully worded response. ASU’s fact check says that “employees” are not forced to sign diversity statements. But our article doesn’t mention employees. It references “job applicants,” and according to a report from the Goldwater Institute, as of the Fall of 2022, more than 81 percent of job postings at ASU mandated a diversity statement from applicants.
ASU’s “fact check” claims that Lin Blake left for reasons having nothing to do with the Lewis Center event, which certainly makes it sound like she left of her own accord. But then it goes on to say it would be glad to provide more information about her leaving. That makes no sense. Just like it makes no sense to fire someone who was referred to as a “rockstar” within months of pulling off a successful event amid controversy while dealing with staffing shortages due to the Super Bowl occurring the same week.
While ASU has certainly hosted conservative events, our article didn’t say that the school cancels every single conservative event that comes its way. That would’ve thrown up red flags years ago. But it can’t deny that it did cancel a conservative fundraiser in January 2022 with conflicting explanations. And it did cancel the events featuring Brett Weinstein and Katie Pavlich after faculty opposed them in a survey until President Michael Crow felt pressure and restored the events.
Finally, ASU claims that no centers were closed or personnel were fired as a result of the event. Their stance is that the donor to the Lewis Center simply withdrew his gift. But once again, ASU isn’t disclosing the entire story. T.W. Lewis says that he pulled his funding because of ASU’s hostility to conservative thinkers. And Ann Atkinson—the executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center who was fired—says that she offered a diversified group of donors to offset the funding, but that Barrett Honors College Dean Tara Williams wasn’t interested.
Perhaps, instead of spending so much time fact-checking, ASU should simply stop giving in to the leftist faculty mob and follow through on its supposed commitment to free speech. It’s not enough to just allow speakers to speak. Everyone should be able to freely participate in the marketplace of ideas without fear of government censorship or retribution. That’s the heart of the First Amendment. And if ASU won’t commit to it, Arizona lawmakers should do it for them.
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Bad ideas never seem to go away. And in politics, they often get recycled every 10 years because consultants need to make money. That’s why it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we’re seeing another push for jungle primaries in the state of Arizona.
If you’re not familiar with a jungle primary (or open primary), it is an election in which all candidates run in the same primary regardless of their political party. The top two candidates who receive the most votes then advance to the general election.
Several years ago, California adopted this “solution” under the guise that it would result in more moderate policies and candidates being elected there. Go ahead and read that again. When you think of California, do you think of a state with moderate policies and candidates? That should tell you all you need to know about jungle primaries. And yet, now we have groups like Save Democracy telling us that we need to act more like California to improve Arizona. No thank you!
Of course, Arizona voters already said as much back in 2012 when they overwhelmingly rejected this absurd form of voting. But despite this, Save Democracy has decided to pursue a ballot measure to institute jungle primaries after it realized that its work to bring ranked-choice voting (RCV) to Arizona was a disorganized mess.
No! (You may want to get your popcorn ready for this one.) While Save Democracy has given up on RCV, a group called Voter Choice Arizona (VCA) has not. Clearly upset with Save Democracy stabbing them in the back and pulling their support, VCA is now openly feuding with its former ally in Save Democracy after it was forced to clarify that they are 100% committed to putting a ranked-choice voting measure on the 2024 ballot.
On top of all this, the Republican-led legislature already voted to send a measure to the 2024 ballot that would give Arizona voters a chance to further protect our primary election system from ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries. So, if you’re keeping score at home, that means we could have three potential ballot initiatives in 2024 dealing with ranked-choice voting or jungle primaries.
This may all seem confusing, but no less confusing than ranked-choice voting where:
Candidates are listed on the ballot, and voters rank each candidate in order of preference.
If a candidate wins 50% or more of the first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner.
If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
In the next round, voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice then have their vote counted for their second preference.
The process continues until one candidate eventually wins the majority of the adjusted votes.
Jungle primaries will cause many of the same problems—leaving Arizona voters confused and potentially resulting in candidates from the same party being on the ballot in the general election. And that doesn’t even get into the impact all this could have on our voting machines that have had enough trouble under the current system.
The reality is that we’ve already seen significant issues with ranked-choice voting in Alaska. And jungle primaries in California have resulted in fewer candidate choices and even more far left radical politics. We can’t let that happen here. Arizona voters already rejected jungle primaries once. Now, they should shoot them down again.
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Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
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Universities are supposed to be the “marketplace of ideas.” With a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), you would think that Arizona State University (ASU) would understand this. But apparently, the school would rather be just another woke university that shuts down free speech. Now, the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development—a center of the Barrett Honors College—and its executive director Ann Atkinson have found out the hard way.
Back in February, Atkinson organized an event on “Health, Wealth, and Happiness” as part of a series from the Lewis Center focused on connecting students with professionals who can offer career and life advice. Speakers for the event included Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki, radio talk show host and founder of Prager U Dennis Prager, founder and president of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, and heart-transplant cardiologist Radha Gopalan. For a university that offers classes on subjects like witchcraft and critical theories of sexuality, this event felt pretty tame by comparison. But the mere mention of these conservative speakers caused more than 75 percent of the Barrett Honors College faculty to have a meltdown. (Looks like ASU’s commitment to force job applicants to sign diversity statements is paying off.)
Along with sending a letter to Barrett Honors College Dean Tara Williams condemning the event and calling the speakers “purveyors of hate,” some faculty spent time in class denouncing it while others actually recruited students to oppose the program. On top of that, on-campus marketing of the event was removed with fliers torn down and all digital advertising scrubbed. Atkinson was also told by the dean that she couldn’t send an email promoting the event all while ASU continued to promote a counter-event. And she was warned that if the speakers made any political statements, it wouldn’t be in the “best interests” of the Lewis Center.
Atkinson ignored all the threats, and the event proved to be a great success with 1,500 attendees in person, more than 24,000 attendees online, and zero disturbances or traumatized students.
So, how did ASU respond to this success?
Lin Blake, the event operations manager at ASU Gammage Theater (where the event was held), was fired despite initially being labeled a “rockstar” for how she handled the event. And as of June 30, ASU dismantled the Lewis Center and terminated Atkinson’s position.
Of course, this isn’t the first time ASU has shown disdain for conservative events. In January 2022, the university offered conflicting explanations for canceling a fundraiser that was set to feature Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs and former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz. And in March 2022, the school initially canceled two other conservative events that included speakers Bret Weinstein and Katie Pavlich. The March events were eventually restored with a follow-up email that stated, “Under the leadership of President Michael Crow, Arizona State University is committed to intellectual diversity.”
For President Crow and ASU, it now appears that “intellectual diversity” and free speech are simply limited to allowing speakers to speak. But if those speakers even dare to hold ideas that are counter to the prevailing orthodoxy on campus, there will be retribution. Positions will be terminated. Centers will be closed. And students will suffer because of it. After all, many undergraduates skipped out on the “Health, Wealth, and Happiness” event because they were worried that their attendance could hurt them academically. That very real possibility should serve as a “red light” to any parent who’s considering paying to send their child to ASU. And it should inspire lawmakers to find ways to ensure that free speech is protected at our state’s taxpayer-funded universities.
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Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
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For years, Arizona has been a target of out-of-state special interest groups that want to put their radical ideas in our state. The process usually goes something like this.
Liberal groups from outside Arizona take an issue that is unpopular with the electorate, like tax hikes.
They come in and hire an army of paid circulators to flood the streets of Phoenix and Tucson to collect their signatures—hardly bothering with the rest of the state.
Bad policy and sweeping reforms are placed on our ballots with only a small fraction of the state’s support.
One of the most recent examples of this was Prop 208, which narrowly passed in 2020. Out-of-state teachers’ unions spent more than $30 million over four years in their effort to buy the largest tax hike in history—lying to Arizona voters to get signatures and lying to get the slimmest of majorities to approve it. Had it not been for the court system killing Prop 208 once and for all, Arizona would be a high tax state today.
Now, a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Arizona Senator J.D. Mesnard would put a stop to this abuse. SCR 1015 would require that any initiative looking to qualify for the ballot is required to collect signatures from all 30 legislative districts in the state. This means that anyone who thinks they have a good idea that should be on the ballot won’t be able to rely solely on signatures from large cities like Phoenix and Tucson. They will also need to talk to voters in Buckeye, Kingman, Yuma, Wilcox, and more.
This is a commonsense reform that would require a percentage of registered voters from each legislative district to express their support of a ballot initiative before it could appear on a ballot.
Signatures from 10 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any statewide measure.
Signatures from 15 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any constitutional amendment.
Signatures from 5 percent of the qualified electors in each legislative district would be needed to propose a statewide referendum.
Most other states that have an initiative process also have a geographic signature distribution requirement just like this one. And it’s time that Arizona has one as well to make sure that our initiative process is for all Arizonans—not out-of-state special interests.
SCR 1015 will be on the ballot in November 2024, and as you might expect Democrats like Rep. Athena Salman are already busy gaslighting the people of Arizona (while fully mased, of course). And just like with Prop 132 last year, out-of-state unions and liberals will look to spend big to defeat the measure. But Prop 132 passed, which means that a 60 percent majority vote of the people is now required on any ballot measure that seeks to raise your taxes. Let’s ensure that SCR 1015 meets the same fate so that a more representative group of Arizona voters has a say in what appears on the ballot.
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Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
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The Prop 400 package put together by the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) is in serious trouble at the legislature, and Katie Hobbs and the transit lobby knows it. So, in a desperate attempt to rescue their defective plan, they have phoned a friend to see if a little legacy media pressure will improve their flagging fortunes at the Capitol.
In recent weeks, the AZ Republic has unleashed a torrent of articles and opinion pieces attempting to scare the legislature into sending their transit slush fund package up to Hobbs’ desk. Most of their writings have been nothing more than recycled talking points from MAG and transit industry lobbyists attacking conservative lawmakers and critics (like the Club) for opposing a plan that slashes freeway funding and increases traffic congestion in the region.
A couple weeks ago it was in the form of an editorial that claimed to disprove our Prop 400 criticism by “relitigating” the merits of bus and light rail and proving its value in the region. And now over the weekend, their opinion writers couldn’t race out fast enough to promote the press release issued by Katie Hobbs and the transit lobby that the legislature needs to adopt a fake “compromise” MAG plan.
In short, their efforts to “relitigate” the merits of transit or to declare that there is any type of “compromise” only demonstrate how radical their position really is.
Here are just a few examples of how the Republic has veered from journalism to being nothing more than a lobbying arm of the transit lobby:
There Is a Compromise? With Whom?
Over the weekend a choreographed social media blitz was launched by Katie Hobbs and MAG, with their allies at the Republic eagerly playing along. They claimed that Republicans are refusing to move a “compromise plan” that made over 30 concessions, including reductions in light rail spending.
It sounded great, except for one problem: their compromise plan is no different than the plan vetoed by Governor Ducey last year.
That “big concession” about taking light rail out of the plan? What a farce. Light rail expansion isn’t going away, their plan just shifts bus expenditures from municipalities to the regional tax, which then frees up city money to pay for the rail.
These type of cheap accounting tricks are not surprising to those that have been engaged in the Prop 400 debate at the legislature. MAG and the transit lobby have been adamant for over a year that they won’t negotiate, and that their Momentum Plan cannot be altered. Don’t believe us, just watch one of the MAG transportation meetings from the last couple of months where they have restated this position on several occasions.
And given that intransigent position, it is easy to see why they ran to the Republic to reframe the narrative by peddling their bogus compromise.
Does the Republic Know That Transit Ridership in Metro Phoenix Has Collapsed?
On several occasions the Republic has bragged about transit ridership in the region, even boasting about “32 million annual rides on public transportation.”
One wonders if they even know what that figure represents, because that averages out to only 40,000 people a day using transit in the region, in a metropolitan area of 5 million residents. One 4-lane arterial road will carry more people on a given day than ride a bus or take the light rail.
Also conveniently missing from the Republic editorial is that transit ridership has been in decline for over a decade and fell off a cliff during the pandemic (ridership is still half of what it was pre-pandemic). There are now fewer people riding transit today than were riding in 2005, before 33% of the Prop 400 tax was diverted to transit. Voters were promised twenty years ago that spending billions on light and bus would increase transit use, yet the opposite has occurred, all while the region grew in population by over 1.5 million residents.
Other Cities Waste Billions on Transit Too!
The Republic has also taken the time to point out that “other top 10 metropolitan areas in the country all support buses and rail…in equal or greater magnitude.”
This analysis of course leaves out two important details:
The only transit systems not going bankrupt have either imposed performance metrics or are using private operators that are interested in making a profit. Right now fares being collected by Valley Metro are covering only 7% of the cost to operate our buses and light rail. In 2005, they promised voters that fare recovery would be at least 30%. Promises made, promises NOT kept.
Prop 400 Funds Roadway Repairs and Maintenance? Spoiler Alert: It Doesn’t
Another argument promoted by the Republic editorial board is that “a big chunk of Prop 400 proceeds—42% of the projected $14.9 Billion—are to repair and maintain our freeways and roads.” They proceed to state that the entire debate over 400 is “an indictment not of local or regional planning but of the legislature…if the obstructionists at the Capitol truly want to fix potholes and service freeways and streets, then they put their own house in order and raise the gas tax.”
This criticism would be scathing if any of it were true. All of the funding for maintaining and repairing our freeways comes from the state HURF monies and federal dollars. Every dime of that funding is legally required to occur irrespective of Prop 400 moving forward or not.
It’s understandable for someone that is unfamiliar with Prop 400 to make this mistake. But the Republic should know how 400 works, specifically that the proposed tax is slated to only be used toward new freeway and roadway projects.
Clearly they don’t, especially since they proceed to argue that major freeway projects like expanding the I-17 and I-10 should be paid for by the state through a gas tax increase. Really? The only reason the tax exists is to build freeways! MAG’s proposed 400 plan slashes freeway funding by 30%, and the Republic thinks that is a big win for motorists.
MAG Will Only Have Themselves to Blame if 400 Is Not Extended.
Republicans at the legislature aren’t interested in the funding gimmicks or fake concessions promoted by MAG, which is why no agreement has been reached. And now we are nearing the end of the legislative session, which means MAG is running out of time if they want a Prop 400 plan passed at the Capitol.
If they are really interested in seeing something get done, the transit lobby needs to accept that significant changes need to be made to their plan, and no amount of editorials from the Republic is going to change that reality.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
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