The Weak Case for Unrestrained Academic Freedom

Debates about the shape and limits of academic freedom are virtually constant in institutions of higher education, but they have recently become a matter of widespread discussion in the general public. This is largely because the Trump administration has been pushing back against the peculiar ways in which many schools are justifying political propagandizing using the language of academic freedom.

Yale law professor Keith Whittington’s entry into this debate, with his book You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms, tries to occupy a third place between the Trump position and that of the far-left academics who want academic freedom to cover their own ideologies but no ideas anywhere near the political right of the spectrum. If we can just commit to truly “unbridled free inquiry,” things will work out optimally, Whittington argues.

Whittington tries to occupy a third place between the Trump position and that of the far-left academics who want academic freedom to cover their own ideologies. There are many problems with his case. He announces at the outset, astoundingly, that he will not say anything substantive about Critical Race Theory (CRT), currently in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and a useful shorthand for all the various radical and collectivist approaches to racial difference that are present in modern universities. Whittington’s claim is that the substance of these ideas does not matter. If we eliminate CRT, then a body of ideas will be eliminated, and we can’t risk that.

Some ideas are fundamentally unsuited for a society based on individual rights. But this leaps over the sound justification many have given for removing CRT and similar ideas from higher ed. Academic freedom cannot defend the inclusion of just any ideas in college curricula. For example, a professor would be rightly reprimanded or terminated if he taught Nazi theory as a partisan of that theory rather than for its historical interest. Such ideas are fundamentally unsuited for a society based on individual rights. This is the moral compass that ought to guide all of our teaching.

Critical race theories and other bodies of similarly radical material in the humanities and social sciences are equivalent to Nazi theory. They are incompatible with, and indeed endeavor to demolish, basic principles of American culture and social order. They produce no intellectual good for society but seek only to create embittered, angry students who despise their own culture and history.

Whittington worries that restrictions of the teaching of CRT will rob American universities of their high rank internationally in research and scholarship. But Critical Race Theory produces no advances in the understanding of how societies operate and offers no useful insights into how to design social policy. It rejects the Western philosophical and legal consideration of the sacrosanct position of the individual in moral discourse and insists that we formulate all of our social policy on the basis of group identities and grievances about the past.

If CRT disappeared from the American university tomorrow, there would be no negative effects.

A school rightfully prevents the Nazi professor from teaching his ideas, because the success of his ideas means the end of our polity. The same is true of the critical race theorist. A college or university has no right to pursue ends contrary to the existence of the polity. And it is not the professors who decide for the polity.

Whittington believes universities “conserve our rich cultural inheritance, but they are also deeply disruptive.” In some ways, this is true, but when they disrupt core principles of American culture and society, they exceed their charge. Universities cannot be revolutionary institutions.

Much of the book is a detailed examination of legal niceties and judicial precedent concerning expression in higher education. All that detail is beside the point when the central issue bedeviling higher education today is the cultural domination of leftist ideas. Whittington acknowledges the capture of the universities by the far left, but he offers no solution other than “protect[ing] free speech.” When leftist ideologues control the institutions, protecting free speech means protecting leftist ideology.

This ideology includes, as an explicit element of its understanding of the world, the need to eliminate “racist” discourses. That adjective is used broadly to describe virtually any ideas not fully in line with Critical Race Theory. Thus, CRT is itself an attack on academic freedom—not something universities must tolerate and defend.

Anyone in a university today can testify about how the culture in those institutions makes compelled belief almost inevitable. We must preserve, Whittington insists, the understanding of constitutional law that the compulsion of student belief runs afoul of free expression in educational institutions. That is all well and good. But anyone in a university today who is not subsumed by the dominant left ideologies can testify about how the culture in those institutions makes compelled belief almost inevitable. CRT advocates don’t just discuss it—they seek to indoctrinate students in its precepts.

It is incompatible with our First Amendment protections that a professor could require students to participate in political activity. It is incompatible with our First Amendment protections that a professor could require students to participate in political activity that they find contrary to their own beliefs under threat of evaluative punishment. Yet I have heard many times, from students, of examples of just such compulsion.

A common assignment in many activist courses these days is editorial letter-writing on political and social issues. The savvy leftist professor understands she cannot just give students her one pet topic so instead provides them with an array of options—but all of them situated on the progressive left. Sometimes, space is given for students to come up with their own topics. In that case, if a student wants to write about some issue that isn’t in line with CRT, the professor will intervene to force modification into conformity with “correct” thinking.

If the student resists that modification, the professor has other means. I have seen examples of students attempting to skirt the ideological boundaries on such assignments who are then punished with low grades.

It is inappropriate, Whittington correctly observes, for professors to pressure students to adopt their beliefs. The only legitimate pedagogical goal is to get students to learn about bodies of ideas. But he frets that the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict the purview of leftist ideas imposed on students will create the larger problem of getting the federal government involved in the business of deciding what students should or should not learn.

Unfortunately, Whittington betrays no knowledge of the way in which large numbers of humanities and social-science disciplines have already transformed their learning and pedagogical goals to include dogmatic acceptance of contested notions such as structural racism, patriarchy, and climate justice.

At the school where I work, students are required to take courses in race, power, and inequality in which it is accepted as dogma that American society disadvantages non-whites based solely on their race. Any effort to speak against those ideas with more individual- or culture-based theories to explain inequality are ruled out by that curricular approach. According to those professors, they aren’t telling students what they must believe but simply asking them to learn the rules of academic disciplines. But that’s misleading. Many of those disciplines have become hyper-politicized in recent decades, and the faculty have ideological agendas, even if Whittington can’t see them.

When the Trump administration (and state legislatures) attempt to rule out CRT and similar coursework based not on knowledge but on grievances, they aren’t infringing on academic freedom. They are simply trying to steer our colleges and universities back to their mission of transmitting knowledge. If ideologically driven professors want to advance their beliefs, they can do so on their own time.

Alexander Riley is a professor of sociology at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Scholars. All views expressed are his own and do not represent the views of his employer. Follow him on Substack here.