BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2025 issue of Academe, “Defending Academic Values,” out this week. The full issue and table of contents can be found here. Sather Gate, pictured on this issue’s cover, marks the entrance to the heart of the University of California’s Berkeley campus. With Sproul Plaza on one…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT This essay is adapted from the author’s contribution to a forum the Johns Hopkins University AAUP chapter organized to discuss Lisa Siraganian’s Academe article “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” As with so many other liberal principles, the Right has seized and perverted the seemingly benign pluralism implied by “viewpoint diversity” to…
BY LAURIE ESSIG On Wednesday, October 1, the Department of Education sent nine universities a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The document asks universities to comply with a variety of restrictions like capping the number of international students and not considering factors like race or gender in hiring and admissions. More ominously, the…
BY ERIC J. WEINER Although Lisa Siraganian’s recent article ”Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity” includes important considerations for the heterodox academic community, her theses do more to distort the intentions and purposes of heterodoxical teaching and learning than to illuminate its potential conflicts and contradictions. Siraganian’s general critique of “viewpoint diversity” is that it is…
BY AMY HAGOPIAN Public health professionals are charged with responding to humanitarian crises. When hospitals are bombed, when children are deliberately starved, when doctors are assassinated, we’re supposed to speak up. That’s the job. Last week, I was informed my American Public Health Association membership has been revoked, my annual meeting registration cancelled, and I…
BY LAURA GOLDBLATT, MELISSA LEVY, AND DAN SEGAL With scant exceptions, US colleges and universities have a board of trustees that is the institution’s highest decision-making or governance body. In response to the current widespread assault on academic freedom, rights of speech and assembly on campus, and the role of campus governance, the Academic Council…
BY THE AAUP-PENN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE We were alarmed to read reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so would jeopardize federal funding. When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact…
BY JOHN WARNER AND ANNA FEDER The following is a repost of a piece that originally appeared on “Academic Freedom on the Line,” a Substack run by Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom fellow John Warner. The past few weeks have seen a volume of violations of academic freedom not seen since the Red…
BY DALE E. MILLER In “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” Professor Lisa Siraganian throws down a gauntlet. After offering “seven theses against viewpoint diversity in any of its guises,” she writes that “if viewpoint diversity means committing oneself to a robust debate about truth and values, then the movement should be open to responding to…
BY JONATHAN REES In the last week of classes of the spring 2025 semester, our administration announced a deal that would allow Barnes & Noble to take over our university bookstore. It included an arrangement that would guarantee students access to all their textbooks on the first day of classes, in exchange for students paying…