Academic Freedom, With an Asterisk

Colleges tend to have policies on academic freedom that on their face appear to confer broad protection. But the actual scope of protection is a matter of interpretation, and is often much narrower. In practice, the measure of acceptable campus expression is often based on the extent to which speech offends or is viewed as harmful. The contemporary technology environment amplifies this dynamic. Social media help ensure that expression that is accused of being offensive is communicated to the very people most likely to view it as such, leading to a feedback cycle that further increases the risks that opinions or research conclusions falling outside of campus-proscribed boundaries will attract attention and protest. This is the academic freedom elephant in the room, and it plays a far more powerful role in shaping discourse and research than does the text in a university’s formal academic freedom policy.

Conclusion

We've made the case throughout this book that the academic enterprise is limited by a set of three beliefs. Much of what is of concern in the current academic climate could be ameliorated with a broader recognition of the value of debate, dissent, and consideration of divergent viewpoints. The ability to have engaged, thoughtful conversations on issues where divergence and sometimes strident divergence exists is critical for a functional society. If America's colleges cease to be places of free inquiry, American society will become less open, less innovative, and provide fewer opportunities. If we are going to move towards those answers, colleges need to be places where people are free to think outside the box, question assumptions, and propose new ways of seeing, analyzing, and engaging with some of the most pressing challenges facing society.

Solutions

In light of a culture in American academia that is unwelcoming to debate and free inquiry on a growing number of topics, it’s natural to ask whether there are frameworks from outside the academy that provide lessons that could be valuable in improving academic discourse. The answer is yes. Across time and place, innumerable groups have grappled with ways to engage in discourse, to disagree, to debate, to resolve disputes, and to attempt to build understanding and bridge differences. This chapter explores how frameworks from outside academia can provide valuable lessons to improve the campus climate. It then presents a series of recommendations that could significantly improve on-campus tolerance and broaden the scope of discourse.

Beyond Academia

This book has focused on academia. However, the broader impact on discourse of the climate we describe isn’t limited to academia: Many aspects of contemporary academic culture are also present outside of academia. Campus culture is reflected particularly strongly in the technology sector, in which many companies have workforces with many relatively recent college graduates. It is also found outside the technology sector, including in media. These environments feature many of the same dynamics that constrain on-campus discourse, including unwritten rules on what can’t be said, call-out culture, and career-imperiling disciplinary investigations for those accused of expressing views inconsistent with the three beliefs.

Counterarguments

Multiple counterarguments could be voiced in response to the assertions made in this book. It could be asserted that there is no crisis in academia. Or one could suggest that while the three beliefs constrain dialog, they do so appropriately. Additional counterarguments are that academic freedom in this restricted environment is broad enough, and that it must yield to claims of harm arising from assertions deemed offensive. This chapter explains and offers a rebuttal to each of these counterarguments. In doing so, we aim to explain what is lost when the range of on-campus discourse is overly constrained.

Classroom Consequences

Knowledge production happens mainly through research, but a primary mechanism for knowledge dissemination to students occurs in the classroom. The classroom experience plays a central role in one of the key goals of a college education: to teach students how to engage thoughtfully and creatively with complex, nuanced topics. In the current climate, the learning experience for students, particularly in courses that address potentially controversial topics such as race and gender, is constrained. An instructor’s belief that there is open conversation admitting a wide range of perspectives in the classroom does not mean that is occurring. To the contrary, it is possible to have a robust debate within the confines of the three core beliefs we have articulated and to as a result think that the discussion has been truly open, while in reality it may only have been open within a very limited aperture.

Social Media and The Publication Process

The three beliefs have created a situation where certain ideas, claims, and questions are protected from criticism, and therefore from open inquiry. As a corollary, academic publications that present ideas running counter to these beliefs are subject to what is in essence an extra round of social media–driven review that starts after a paper has already successfully navigated the traditional peer-review process and been published. This dynamic acts as a form of censorship that can impact a journal’s immediate handling of the paper in question. In addition, the very existence of postpublication social media review will act to shape the behavior of researchers and journal editors. The result is an environment with substantial constraints on free inquiry.

The Three Beliefs

Three beliefs shape much of what occurs on campuses. Taken together, these three beliefs make up a worldview that readily compromises certain values (like respect for free speech and viewpoint diversity) when they are viewed as conflicting with the goals of protecting against claims of harm. The first belief is that any action to undermine or replace traditional frameworks is by definition a good thing. The second belief is that, absent the hand of discriminatory actors, all group-level outcomes would be equal. The third belief is in the primacy of identity, which is commonly invoked through race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Challenges to Open Inquiry

Knowledge grows when conventional wisdom can be challenged, extended, modified, updated, and, in some cases, proven to be completely wrong. This doesn’t mean that all of today’s socially informed beliefs are wrong. But it does mean that it would be a mistake to assume that all of them must be right. If history is any guide, some percentage of what are taken as “truths” today will in fact be understood to be wrong in the future. If that proposition is accepted, then of logical necessity, moving toward a fuller understanding of complex social issues requires viewing them with a wide aperture, and with a willingness to engage with, criticize, and either accept or reject hypotheses that may be out of step with the three beliefs.

The New Landscape of Tenure

The tenure decision is intentionally constructed around the very idea of career vulnerability, since the real possibility of its denial is central to the entire process. The last thing a tenure-track professor wants or needs is to do or say anything that will motivate people to oppose a positive tenure decision. The surest way to avoid this is to steer clear of both research and social media activity that might stir up opposition. Thus, obtaining tenure now requires a more careful effort than in the past to steer clear of politically controversial topics, both in research and in public statements on any topic.