This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

The topic this week was a lawsuit challenging California Community Colleges' new diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—or DEIA—teaching standards, which allegedly "mandate viewpoint conformity" and "compel professors to teach and preach the State's perspective," according to the lawsuit Palsgaard v. Christian, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.  

Reason's Zach Weissmuller and Liz Wolfe welcomed FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby and Bill Blanken, a plaintiff in the case and a chemistry professor at Reedley College in California. Blanken says the standards advanced by the state's community college board amount to  "compelled speech" in the classroom and that he will not comply with them.  

We talked about the details of the case, dove into the substance of the proposed changes in the classroom, discussed the origins of the DEIA standards that now pervade academia and the corporate world, and examined FIRE's other case against Florida's Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits exactly the kind of classroom instruction that California's new standards compel.

Today's sponsors:

• Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason magazine podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.

The post Jessie Appleby and Bill Blanken: Do California Community Colleges 'Mandate Viewpoint Conformity'? appeared first on Reason.com.