Academic freedom (like many other aspects of freedom) is under attack in America. More and more, faculty members who don’t perfectly exhibit “wokeness” find themselves in trouble — censored or even terminated.
In today’s Martin Center article, Peter Bonilla of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education examines the threats to academic freedom, using a recent book on that topic as his springboard.
Bonilla begins with one of the book’s cases: “The collection features a first-person account from retired University of Colorado sociology professor Patricia Adler, who was subjected to a Title IX investigation over a popular skit in her ‘Deviance in U.S. Society’ course, in which graduate assistants portrayed sex workers in several different social strata. Even in the absence of a formal complaint, the university removed her from teaching and pressured her to retire, which she recounts in unsparing detail. It’s a fresh reminder of the outrages of the case — and also the fact that the Biden administration is intent on bringing back precisely the sorts of chilling regulations that precipitated CU’s deplorable conduct.”
The central problem, according to Professor Joseph Hermanowicz (who edited the book) is that the principle of academic freedom is not taught anywhere. Bonilla agrees. Students hardly ever hear the case for academic freedom these days. Conversely, they often hear demands for silencing unwanted voices along with authoritarian justifications for doing so.
Writes Bonilla, “Student support for free expression is already spotty, and has been declining for years in a number of key categories, as the latest data from the Knight Foundation show. Students too often arrive at college with a deficient understanding of the basics of the First Amendment, and aren’t likely to have this education supplemented unless they go out of their way to find it. Why should we expect any better when it comes to understanding academic freedom — a doctrine which has some standing in First Amendment law but which has also acquired a set of common-law principles intricately tied to the particular history of American higher education?”
Until we once again teach the principles of freedom, the American education system will continue to churn out throngs of zealous students who don’t want opinions they disagree with to be heard.