MOOCS and beyond.
How to reframe the debate over academic freedom and campus free speech.
Not a week goes by without controversy erupting over academic freedom, free speech on campus, cancel culture and political correctness. Recent examples include well-publicized hullabaloos at two leading law schools:
As the legal analyst David Lat laments, free speech in American laws schools is increasingly becoming “a lost cause.”
Of course, I should add, the most dangerous threats to academic freedom will come not from activist students but from legislatures that mimic the restrictions they are placing on K-12 schools.
The time has come, in my view, to reframe the conversation about academic freedom.
If I might be so bold, I’d submit that the current discourse surrounding free speech on campus tends to lapse into one of two forms:
In the opinion of Mark Joseph Stern and John K. Wilson, protesters, too, have a right to engage in debate and express their beliefs. That’s what a “a free and open” clash of ideas requires, so long as it is not violent or prevents parties from speaking. To require protests to be “civil” and “well-mannered” is also, in this view, a restriction on free speech.
So how might we move beyond this bitter divide?
What are the policy implications of these ideas?
Civility is quite rightly prized as a civic virtue, but it is not the highest value within the academy. I, like you, try to behave in a polite, courteous, respectful manner. But within our universities, our Summa Theologiae is vigorous, full-bodied, ear-piercing debate.
Let’s do more to encourage argument. Let’s invite our students to contest and challenge received ideas and the conventional wisdom. Let’s model impassioned yet informed debate.
However uncomfortable we may find contention, conflict and controversy, and however much we might value harmony and consensus, we need to reassert a basic academic principle: that a true education isn’t a matter of passing down knowledge, but grows out of disagreement, dispute and debate.
Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
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