Monday, May 18, 2020

Justice at Last: Free Speech Conqueror Zach Wood '18 Continues to Unload on Adam Falk

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The most famous and bravest Williams College graduate in a decade, Zach Wood '18, continues to pour fire and brimstone on Adam Falk, the school's disgraced ex-president.

In a new article in The College Fix, Zach shared with editor Jennifer Kabbany the motivations for releasing his newest story on the shaby treatment he received as a free speech activist at the hands of the Falk administration. 

In an email to The College Fix, Wood explained why he is telling this story now.
He said he chose to focus his book more on student backlash to free speech and the broader intellectual arguments at stake, but that more recently “powerful leaders have threatened and tried to intimidate and humiliate people I care about and I want to be fully involved in defending them and the values I believe in.”
“… I want to highlight why freedom of the press is personal for me, and underscore that I have a dog in the fight,” Wood said. “I am fully engaged and I am determined to win. Censorship has no place in our democracy.”
Wood said his piece in NAS aimed to highlight Falk’s “propensity to misrepresent the state of affairs.”
“Leaders who distort the truth like that tend to use intimidation to silence those who criticize them. I want to drill in the point that we should intensely oppose and resist these leaders,” Wood said.
You can read up on the full extent of Adam Falks devious efforts to halt freedom of speech at Williams College in Zach's recent article for the National Association of Scholars.

Zach Wood has had an outstanding experience since his graduation from Williams College. As you may know, he is an Assistant Curator at TED, a former columnist and Assistant Opinion Editor at The Guardian, and a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Times Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. In 2017, he gave Senate testimony opposing the recent string of college speaker disinvitations and in defense of viewpoint diversity. He’s planning to attend law school in the not too distant future, according to Steven Hayward at the Power Line Blog.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

Commander of Free Speech, Zach Wood '18, Guest Hosts The Power Line Show

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I was proud to see Zach Wood, easily one of Williams College's bravest and most talented students, got a chance to guest host the Power Line Show. You can hear it by clicking on the audio link established in this Power Line article. While you are at it, check out this glowing introduction from Power Line's Steve Hayward:

This episode flips the usual format, with my guest interviewing me for a change. I first took note of Zachary Wood when he was an undergraduate of Williams College. He was the president of a student group called “Uncomfortable Learning,” whose mission was to invite to campus outside speakers with a heterodox perspective (which is code for “conservative” for the most part). Invitees included Charles Murray, Christina Hoff Sommers, David French, John Christy, and others. For this transgression against campus orthodoxy, Zach was dressed down by the president of William College, and further instructed that he should “be careful” about what he wrote in the student newspaper—a story he tells in this article published recently by the National Association of Scholars.

From this experience Zach has understandably became concerned about free speech generally, and freedom of the press in particular, and when Zach told me that he was interested in recording some interviews and conversations with people (starting with me) on free speech and free press issues, but didn’t yet have an online platform ready to launch, I decided to offer him an episode of the Power Line Show to start things rolling and get some practice. As journalism was my first career right out of college back around the time of the Boer War, we thought it would be fun and informative to go through some long-term perspectives on modern media.

Zachary R. Wood is an Assistant Curator at TED, a former columnist and Assistant Opinion Editor at The Guardian, and a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Times Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. In 2017, he gave Senate testimony opposing the recent string of college speaker disinvitations and in defense of viewpoint diversity. He’s planning to attend law school in the not too distant future.

This Week in Pictures - Williams College Edition