Academic Freedom in an Age of Political Polarization

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I had the privilege and pleasure of participating in a terrific panel discussion of “Academic Freedom in an Age of Political Polarization” at the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C.  My fellow panelists were Sigal Ben-Porath, Professor of Education, Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and author of…

Offensive Speech in the Classroom

BY KEITH E. WHITTINGTON Guest blogger, Keith E. Whittington, is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and the author of Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech. The spring semester got off to a somewhat rocky start at Princeton University when a number of students walked out of a class…

University of North Georgia President Stands by Harassed Professor Joshua Cuevas

POSTED BY KELLY HAND In his article recently published in the January–February issue of Academe magazine, “A New Reality? The Far Right’s Use of Cyberharassment against Academics,” Joshua A. Cuevas offers a firsthand account of being targeted by malicious online attacks using fabricated information. In counteracting these efforts to sabotage his professional reputation, Cuevas documented the…

Why Banning Bannon Is Bad

BY JOHN K. WILSON This morning, about 100 student protesters at the University of Chicago (including UChicago YDSA, UChicago Student Action, UChicago Socialists, and Students Working Against Prisons) chanted “Disinvite! Disinvite! Disinvite!” and demanded that the administration ban an invitation from University of Chicago business professor Luigi Zingales for Steve Bannon to speak on campus. As…

Why We Have Free Speech on University Campuses, and Why I Will Never Take a Call From the Stanford Review Again

BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU This essay by Stanford professor David Palumbo-Liu originally was published in the Stanford Daily. As anyone who has carefully read the U.S. Constitution knows, the right to free speech is a negative freedom — it protects us from any attempt by our government to stifle the expression of our ideas. The underlying…