As chairs of the Academic Freedom Councils at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton universities, we are alarmed at the threats to academic freedom currently faced by American universities.
In light of recent scrutiny on higher education by the U.S. federal government, on April 2, the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom (PCAF) held a roundtable discussion in McCosh Hall titled, “Should Universities Engage in Politics?
The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) today issued a statement regarding the deportation of noncitizen scholars and students from American universities.
Universities have cracked down on professors for pro-Palestinian activism, saying they are protecting students and tamping down on hate speech. Faculty members say punishments have put a “chill in the air.”
Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and George Washington University President Emeritus Stephen Joel Trachtenberg discussed campus free speech following the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel at an event hosted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in Washington, D.C.
The Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management and International Studies issued a statement of neutrality in the wake of the University's new policies limiting institutional comment on current political events.
The freedom of each Princeton faculty member to speak candidly on all manner of issues is indispensable. If faculty cannot express a broad range of intellectual views, including controversial ones, then the University’s mission to further human knowledge and educate students to become discerning, thoughtful citizens cannot be fully realized.
The University of Pennsylvania is embracing a stance of institutional neutrality as more colleges across the country retreat from weighing in on the social justice debates of the day.
Erika López Prater lost her job in 2022 after a Muslim student objected to seeing historic Muhammad artworks in class.
A nationally prominent conservative lawyer, hired to defend the state’s Stop WOKE Act, asserted that what public university professors say in classrooms “is the government’s speech.” The national implications for academic freedom could be dire.
The policy could ease pressure on the school to issue statements on current events. Officials were criticized for their handling of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
Amid spiraling campus speech debates, many professors are rallying in defense of a bedrock principle. But can they agree on just what it means?