In Defense of Academic Freedom

In Defense of Academic Freedom

Three reasons why even wrongheaded or harmful ideas should not be censored

Free Speech and the Philosophy Classroom: The Wrong Question

Welcome to the APA Mini-Series Blog organized by the APA Committee on Professional Rights and Academic Freedom, formerly, the Committee on the Professional Rights of Philosophers. We changed our name last year in order to highlight the centrality of Academic Freedom to our charge. Given recent events, it was not a moment too soon. It is a stressful time […] The post Free Speech and the Philosophy Classroom: The Wrong Question first appeared on B…

Universities’ Stalinesque Procedures Are Silencing Unpopular Professors — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

At one time, most Americans (and virtually all academics) would have agreed with the famous saying, often attributed to Voltaire, “While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Over the last several decades, that has dramatically changed. Many academics now seem to embrace the opposite view—something like, “Since I disagree with what you say, I will do everything possible to silence you.” Is that an exagge…

More on academic freedom versus free speech: the homily ends

This is the last (I hope) of three posts on a topic I’m reading about: academic freedom (I have to be on a panel about the topic in June). Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. I won’t reprise what I said in those posts except to summarize their main points: Post 1: The “clash of ideas” touted by Mill and others as the primary virtue of free speech, assuming that this clash will produce the truth, is in fact ineffective at furnishing us with the tr…