Supporting Students Free Expression

Jennifer Schuessler
New York Times

Excerpt: Academic freedom is a bedrock of the modern American university. And lately, it seems to be coming under fire from all directions.

For many scholars, the biggest danger is at public universities in Republican-controlled states like Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has led the passage of laws that restrict what can be taught and spearheaded efforts to reshape whole institutions. But at some elite private campuses, faculty have increasingly begun organizing against a very different threat. Over the past year, faculty groups dedicated to academic freedom have sprung up at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where even some liberal scholars argue that a prevailing progressive orthodoxy has created a climate of self-censorship and fear that stifles open inquiry.

Jonathan Marks
The UnPopulist

Excerpt: No organization defends free speech on American college campuses more effectively than the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). It fights not only in the court of public opinion but also in real courts.

Challenging serious free speech abrogations on campuses is a worthy goal. But overstating the extent of repression on campus, as FIRE’s CEO and president Greg Lukianoff does in a recent article in the Atlantic, undermines that cause.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: When members of N.C. State University’s College of Education faculty voted to express “no confidence” in the university’s chancellor and provost last weekend, it was a first in the university’s history. But the largely symbolic vote reflects greater tensions on campuses across the UNC System, as faculty say they feel locked out of high level decision-making by administrators and political appointees.

Angel Eduardo
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Last week, FIRE, along with the Academic Freedom Alliance and Heterodox Academy, released an open letter urging universities to adopt the principle of institutional neutrality articulated by the University of Chicago’s 1967 Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action, also known as the “Kalven Report.”

The Kalven Report posits the best way to guard against establishing party lines on campus — and deterring those who disagree from speaking out — is for schools to remain “the home and sponsor of critics,” rather than the critics themselves. This requires committing to “an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain[ing] an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.”

Suzanne Nossel
Boston Globe

Excerpt: There is no quick fix or silver bullet solution to what ails our campuses. The issues making headlines and agitating quads — with students and faculty afraid to voice opinions and political debates waged through shouts and intimidation rather than reasoned inquiry — can’t be solved with a few high-profile gestures.

University leaders need to think big. Concerns over the unmooring of free speech, academic freedom, and ideological diversity on campus can only be addressed through campuswide transformation. Such change is possible: Universities have successfully adapted to coeducation and the drive toward environmental sustainability, to cite but two examples, with sweeping changes. Now universities need to make a similarly sustained and concerted effort to restore cultures where open exchange can thrive.

Pippa Norris
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The animus for much of the recent debate roiling Harvard is the claim that the liberal tilt of the academy has accelerated in recent years. This process is believed to have excluded heterodox voices and thereby restricted academic freedom of expression on college campuses.

Is there solid evidence that viewpoint diversity has indeed worsened over time in academia, as widely assumed? A 2023 survey I helped conduct with The World of Political Science monitored the economic and social ideological values of political scientists, as well as their attitudes towards academic freedom of expression and perceptions of cancel culture. Focusing upon a subset of respondents living and working in western universities and colleges, cohort analysis by decade of birth is a technique which can provide proxy insights into trends over time.