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The presidents of a wide-ranging group of 13 universities are promoting free speech on their campuses this academic year, as part of a nonprofit initiative announced Tuesday to combat what organizers call dire threats to US democracy. The participating schools include the University of Notre Dame, a private Catholic research school, Benedict College, a historically Black school in South Carolina, Rollins College, a small liberal arts school in Florida, and Ivy League member Cornell University, which in April announced that freedom of expression would be the theme for its 2023 school year. The other schools are Claremont McKenna College, DePauw University, Duke University, James Madison University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Richmond, Rutgers University, Wellesley College, and Wesleyan University.

In September 2022, Monica Byrne ’03 gave most of her possessions away and put the rest in storage. “The pandemic had erased my life,” she writes, “and I had to start over.”