Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism will host a trio of conservative voices in journalism and law on Tuesday for a panel discussion on the rise of distrust from the political right of higher education and the news media. 

The event, titled “Bridging the Divide: Trust in Higher Education and Media Through Conservative Lenses,” will feature Robert Shibley, a free speech lawyer and the former executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator and The Dispatch’s editor-in-chief and co-founder; and Aaron Sibarium, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon covering law and higher education.

“I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to educate the Yale Community about the value of pluralism, free speech, and anti-discrimination law. Doing the work is never easy, but I’m glad Yale has decided to hold space for these difficult conversations,” Sibarium said in a statement.

Sibarium, a Yale alumni whose coverage at the Free Beacon has centered around the rise of far-left ideologies on campuses nationwide, was responsible for uncovering the allegations of plagiarism against former Harvard President Claudine Gay, prompting her resignation less than 24 hours after his final report in a series of articles published between December 2023 and January 2024.

Gay’s status as president was already embattled at the time over her widely criticized comments at a House hearing on campus antisemitism the month prior. Gay equivocated during her testimony when repeatedly asked whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.

In addition to his role at The Dispatch, Goldberg is a conservative commentator and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he holds the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty. He was previously an editor at the National Review. Goldberg has been critical of attempts by left-wing voices to justify violent or unlawful behavior during campus protests since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and has condemned the anti-Zionist embrace within the progressive movement as “a moral scandal.” 
Shibley had left FIRE to enter private practice after 19 years with the group (including more than seven years as executive director) in the fall of 2022, only to return in May of last year as special counsel for campus advocacy after “having realized things on campus were even worse than he had believed,” according to his biography on FIRE’s website. The bio states that Shibley’s role focuses on “restoring free speech and due process to America’s college campuses.”