More Pressure on Babson Over Iran Joke Firing

Babson College is facing new pressure to reinstate the staffer and adjunct faculty member it terminated earlier this month over his joke about Iran. In a letter to Babson, the free speech group PEN America wrote that against "a national backdrop in which punishments for speech are chilling open discourse, this draconian outcome risks compounding the constrictions on our public discourse." As an institution of higher learning, the letter says, "Babson should be on the side of defending free thought rather than punishing it."