Academic Freedom: How Universities Lost Their Way

August 05, 2025 1 min read

Jonathan Zimmerman 
Washington Monthly

Excerpt: We’ve got this, say some colleges and universities. Yes, we’re cutting deals with Donald Trump’s administration. But we are also preserving our core value: academic freedom. We’ll be OK.

That’s what Columbia University declared last month, when it agreed to pay the administration $200 million for allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment. And it’s what Harvard said last week, when it canceled a journal’s special issue devoted to education in Palestine. Don’t believe them. The Harvard episode is a textbook case of censorship, brought to you by those who proclaim fealty to academic freedom. And once we have turned our back on that principle, we won’t have any reason to exist.

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