Two core principles of higher education—academic freedom and free expression—are under great stress. Sometimes, the stress is direct: Well-intended attempts to foster diversity and inclusion sometimes tie hiring, tenure, and promotion to controversial views about equality and how to advance it. Or government actors exercise their oversight role in such a way as to suggest that the mere discussion of divisive issues could result in sanctions. Sometimes the stress is indirect, a matter of culture rather than regulation. Classroom discussion is chilled by the fear of a censorious minority, on or off campus, left wing or right wing, that can make one’s life miserable and impose high costs on speakers. Increasing ideological uniformity on campus further constrains free inquiry and expression by faculty and students alike.
More broadly, faculty speech is constrained in a polarized environment in which different factions are powerful enough to punish it. Evidence is ample that the intellectual climate on many college campuses impairs discussion of issues about which Americans passionately disagree. Faculty members confront these stresses amid falling trust in higher education across the board.
The chilling of campus speech is having effects beyond campus borders. Rather than lessening the political polarization in our nation today, the inhibition of campus speech is degrading the civic mission of higher education, carried out especially by faculty members in their classrooms and co-curricular work. That mission is to maintain our pluralistic democracy by preparing students for civic participation as independent thinkers who can tolerate contrary viewpoints and work constructively with those with whom they have principled disagreements.
Among groups on campus, faculty have the biggest stake in preserving academic freedom. To do so, they must act not only occasionally when their own academic freedom is threatened but consistently to maintain a healthy culture of academic freedom and free expression. The character and means of maintaining such a culture will vary according to the missions and histories of different campus communities. Yet college faculty should not only affirm academic freedom and free expression but also actively support the rigorous exercise of these freedoms by presenting students with competing ideas and encouraging a robust intellectual exchange so that they may draw their own conclusions.
Faculty must take on four challenges:
- They must acknowledge the potential tension between upholding free expression and maintaining an inclusive and respectful learning environment for all. Every faculty member who understands the high stakes of teaching and research knows that permissible speech can cause people to feel hurt or excluded from a community. Although some expression can be hurtful, freedom of expression remains an essential condition of the genuine inclusiveness that characterizes communities of teachers and learners. It also remains essential to higher education’s academic and civic missions.
- Faculty should champion a diversity of viewpoints on campus. Exposing students to a wide range of perspectives and methods of confronting issues, while giving students the tools to listen carefully and distinguish between stronger and weaker arguments, is at the heart of teaching. It is also essential preparation for the rigors of citizenship in a diverse society. Faculty themselves should want to surround themselves with colleagues who will put them to the test and discourage common assumptions from hardening into orthodoxies.
- Faculty should support strong policies that protect academic freedom and free expression for students and faculty alike, as well as support the consistent application of such policies to unorthodox and unconventional views, including those disfavored by most faculty members. These policies should include provisions to hold orientations for faculty and graduate students that will introduce them to the institution’s culture. Although graduate students are, for good reason, subject to more supervision than other members of that community, visible support for their academic freedom is one way of signaling its importance.
- Faculty should make the skills and dispositions necessary for academic and civic discourse a central aim of the collegiate experience. Absent such skills and dispositions, formal protections for free expression and academic freedom, though necessary, are insufficient to create a culture of open inquiry and respectful, productive debate on campus and in the nation. Matriculating students typically need coaching and instruction in these skills and dispositions, for want of which our national discourse suffers. Our aim should be to graduate students who raise the bar for serious discourse. Faculty should attend to how curricula can support that aim. At the same time, the culture of academic freedom and free expression is not just for students. Faculty can do more, in their dealings with each other, to consider and adhere to the norms that characterize that culture.
Faculty face considerable challenges in preserving free expression and academic freedom. Although no college’s faculty is responsible for curing the ills of higher education nationally, this moment presents significant opportunities for professors to make a positive impact at their own institutions.
In this guide, we first examine the role of faculty and explain the nature and importance of the twin values of free expression and academic freedom. Next, we survey some important changes in our social, political, and campus landscapes. Finally, we present a roadmap with recommendations for faculty seeking to invigorate a culture of robust yet respectful inquiry on their campuses.