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Arizona State University Alumni for Free Speech
ASU Alumni for Free Speech makes a big splash.
Feb 14, 2025
In the introduction to Volume II of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the Frenchman prepared his readers for neither a polemic against democracy nor an unqualified defense thereof: “The author who wishes to make a lasting mark in this area must approach his subject in a spirit of sincere and generous friendship for democracy, yet without blind flattery. He must love it enough to tell the truth about it.”
It is in a similar spirit that ASU Alumni for Free Speech approach our work. We owe it to our university to tell the truth. We act from love, not from rage. We seek to build up ASU as a bastion of academic excellence, free expression, and higher education done well; not to tear it down.
It benefits no one — not the university, not her students, not her professors, not her administrators, not her alumni — to ignore hard truths and bask in comfortable lies. Neither does it benefit anyone to speak only hard truths — we must be honest about all that our alma mater does well.
ASU Alumni for Free Speech will celebrate our university’s successes, and constructively critique her missteps.
Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), one of the nation’s leading free speech organizations, published a profile of our new organization. Here’s a brief excerpt from the flattering piece:
Pitts says it’s now fashionable to view a college diploma as little more than a fancy receipt. People think, I paid my tuition, endured the required courses, and behold: I’m credentialed! A neat little market transaction — no lingering ties, no ongoing investment.
But this mindset, Pitts argues, is both morally bankrupt and pragmatically wrong-headed. As a practical matter, he says, “the value of your degree is tied to the reputation of your school — if your alma mater improves over time, your degree becomes more prestigious. If it declines, so does the respect it commands.”
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As a moral matter, “spending four years (or even more) at a university inevitably shapes you in some way,” Pitts says. “And in most cases, it’s for the better — even if we don’t exactly realize it at the time.” Think about it: how many unexpected friendships or serendipitous moments of clarity, insight, rebellion, and revelation do we owe our alma mater?
To discard that connection the moment you graduate — to treat it like an expired gym membership — isn’t just ungrateful. It’s a rejection of one’s own formation.
But beyond these considerations, Pitts insists that what united them on the Canopy Hotel rooftop last year was — love, actually. Not the saccharine, Hallmark kind or the fleeting thrill of a Tinder rendezvous, but the sort of love that drives men to build cathedrals and forge legacies.
Echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, Pitts says, “We love ASU, and to love is to will the good of the other — not to sit idly by.”
I encourage you to read the piece in full, and share it with fellow alumni. There is a national network of allies willing and able to promote our work. We must now go about the work of recruiting fellow Sun Devils to get on board with our mission. Many are already on board — they just have yet to have been told that an organization like ours exists.
Arizona’s public universities should be leaders in free expression and diversity of thought, with policies and campus cultures that welcome new ideas and different points of view. Although they have taken important steps toward this goal in the last few years, new research from ACTA’s Campus Freedom Initiative® (CFI) indicates Arizona’s public universities have more work to do. In ACTA's survey of over 3,000 students at Arizona State University (ASU), Northern Arizona University (NAU), and the University of Arizona (U of A), students still report high levels of intellectual intolerance from fellow students and faculty as well as the need to self-censor on a regular basis.
Access the Arizona report card
Petition Arizona universities to adopt institutional neutrality:
There is much more to come: Stay tuned for our next virtual alumni meeting, subscribe to our newsletter to keep in the loop, and fill out this form to become an official member today (you can join as a private member).
Talk soon, stay well.
Best,
Joe Pitts
Chairman
ASU ‘23
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