(Excerpts from Higher Ed Dive)

• Zoom announced a policy changethis week that gives colleges and universities more control over the virtual events that they host on the video conferencing platform. 
• Calls for Zoom to change its policies came after the company canceled a virtual event last fall hosted by San Francisco State University. The company said the seminar may have breached its terms of serviceand federal law because it featured Leila Khaled, a member of a group considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. YouTube and Facebook also shut down the event.
• Colleges and higher education groups have been pressing Zoom to make the change, arguing that the company's policies threatened academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
• The event exposed a broader problem, said Brian Soucek, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. "In this world where our entire university operations have moved on to Zoom, basically, we were subjecting ourselves to the terms of service of a private company," he said. "Zoom has every right to decide what kind of content it wants to host, but we as a public university can't censor content in that way." 
• Under the new policy, Zoom's moderators will only act on reports alleging violations of the company's terms of service or community standards that come from the meeting's host or the account's owners and administrator, except in select cases.