How Shall Academic Freedom Be Defined?
Martin Center: You have noted that the current UNC System policy manual affirms that academic freedom is essential but does not offer a precise definition. And obviously this has been…
Posts tagged with
“censorship”
Universities Can Appease the Right
Universities are currently experiencing a full-blown assault from the federal government and from red-state politicians. Tired of subsidizing universities as a hotbed of ideological activism, Republican leaders are cutting budgets,…
A Morning at SCiLL
Earlier this month, I got the chance to be a student again for just one morning. It was an opportunity offered to all members of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of…
Professors’ Self-Censoring Has Consequences
In a recent Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey, over 90 percent of college professors from public, private, two-year, and four-year universities said they strongly or somewhat agree that academic freedom…
Censorship at Georgetown
Earlier this year, a graduate student in history at Georgetown named Vishnu Raghavan came upon the 2021 book Kwame Nkrumah: Visions of Liberation by Smith College history chair Jeffrey Ahlman.…
Educators: Beware the Certainty Trap
Despite what headlines often suggest, when it comes to tackling controversial issues on college campuses, the biggest challenge isn’t constraints on academic freedom. It’s not restrictions placed on free speech,…
Have Left-Leaning Students Begun Supporting Free Speech?
According to a recent Axios poll, Republican and Democratic college students agree that campuses must broaden free speech “even if there’s some risk of violence.” Moreover, roughly 77 percent of…
Against Scholar-Activism
The rise of political orthodoxy on campus is often cited as one of the key reasons for reforming universities. But if there is a rise of orthodoxy, what does this…
The American Bar Association’s Coming Free-Speech Intervention
Higher education did not have a good year in 2023, as evidenced by high-profile resignations at Penn (Liz Magill) and Harvard (Claudine Gay). This followed abysmal televised congressional testimony in…
How to Create a Campus Free-Expression Statement
Last spring, I co-led a working group at the University of Wyoming tasked with articulating the principles of freedom of expression, intellectual freedom, and constructive dialogue. In addition to describing…