Conservative governments in the West so rarely do anything actually conservative that, when they do, it is rightly considered headline news. So it was this past month when the U.K. government announced that it wanted to “strengthen freedom of speech and academic freedom in higher education.” In recent years Britain, like the United States, has had a spate of no-platforming incidents that have highlighted the increasingly leftward groupthink in the British higher-education sector. Nor has this halted during the era in which nobody can have an actual platform. In February the distinguished American professor of economics Gregory Clark had a …
This article appears as “The Department of Academic Freedom” in the March 22, 2021, print edition of National Review.
Something to Consider
If you enjoyed this article, we have a proposition for you: Join NRPLUS. Members get all of our content (including the magazine), no paywalls or content meters, an advertising-minimal experience, and unique access to our writers and editors (through conference calls, social media groups, and more). And importantly, NRPLUS members help keep NR going.
