[CHE] A New Group Promises to Protect Campus Free Speech

ran this one by in-house counsel, she says what's more likely today is that he'd potentially face a charge of favoritism from other students. She cited a case that we currently have where a Chinese professor is being accused of "reverse" favoritism--Chinese students believe him to treating Chinese students more harshly re: grading etc.

 

An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science
What scientists are able to teach and what research we can pursue are under attack. I know because I’m living it, writes biologist Luana Maroja.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/an-existential-threat-to-doing-good

excerpt:

As an evolutionary biologist, I am quite used to attempts to censor research and suppress knowledge. But for most of my career, that kind of behavior came from the right. In the old days, most students and administrators were actually on our side; we were aligned against creationists. Now, the threat comes mainly from the left.

The risk of cancellation at Williams College, where I have taught for 12 years, and at top colleges and universities throughout this country, is not theoretical. My fellow scientists and I are living it. What is at stake is not simply our reputations, but our ability to pursue truth and scientific knowledge.

If you had asked me about academic freedom five years ago, I would have complained about the obsession with race, gender and ethnicity, along with safetyism on campus (safe spaces, grade inflation, and so on). But I would not have expressed concerns about academic freedom.

We each have our own woke tipping point—the moment you realize that social justice is no longer what we thought it was, but has instead morphed into an ugly authoritarianism. For me that moment came in 2018, during an invited speaker talk, when the religious scholar Reza Aslan stated that “we need to write on a stone what can and cannot be discussed in colleges.” Students gave this a standing ovation. Having been born under dictatorship in Brazil, I was alarmed.

Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.”

The restriction of academic freedom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research.

Let’s start with teaching. I need to emphasize that this is not hypothetical. The censorious, fearful climate is already affecting the content of what we teach.

One of the most fundamental rules of biology from plants to humans is that the sexes are defined by the size of their gametes—that is, their reproductive cells. Large gametes occur in females; small gametes in males. In humans, an egg is 10 milliontimes bigger than a sperm. There is zero overlap. It is a full binary.

But in some biology 101 classes, teachers are telling students that sexes—not gender, sex—are on a continuum. At least one college I know teaches with the “gender unicorn” and informs students that it is bigoted to think that humans come in two distinct and discrete sexes.
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more at the link

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you've got free speech issues woven throughout these cases as well as academic freedom issues. Related, but important to keep distinct. For example, the university had a chemistry professor (tenured) weigh in on police brutality on his private twitter account. Students complained, the university relieved him of his duties as director of undergraduate studies in chemistry.

https://cornellsun.com/2020/06/08/c...er-tweets-defending-alleged-police-brutality/

In that article the President remarks: “ 'We also saw the tweets by Cornell professor David Collum justifying the actions of the police,' Pollack wrote. 'While Professor Collum has a right to express his views in his private life, we also have a right and an obligation to call out positions that are at direct odds with Cornell’s ethos.'” {emph added}

So what can be perceived as offensive speech may be actionable, or it may not. Again context matters. As a tenured professor he remains employed. The speech was unrelated to the discipline of chemistry, so really not a case (in this instance) of "academic freedom." Academic freedom usually needs some kind of connection to the academic subject matter of a professor's discipline or disciplines. The lines between free speech and academic freedom may blur, however, again depending on the case. So hard to know what to say about your Edwards example: I could imagine students today being really offended (rightly or not) by that kind of speech and arguing that it creates a "hostile and threatening atmosphere" in the classroom. Colleges and universities deal with these types of charges now on a daily basis.

 

this one's a little easier--these are topics related to the discipline of biology and all else being equal, there should be room for genuine disagreement to occur. The activism of trying to shut one's intellectual opponents down completely--as opposed to having a dialogue with those opponents and trying to reason with those opponents--is what that article is about. I disagree that Maroja is trying to shut anyone down and in fact is engaging in free dialogue with the very act of writing the essay.

 

"Enforcing the First Amendment on Campus Won't, by Itself, Address the Problem of Academic Freedom"
"We also need to improve university culture."

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/1...self-address-the-problem-of-academic-freedom/

 

there's a risk of conflating free speech with academic freedom. As I've already said, the two are related but are not the same. An excerpt from the Gordon book reviewed earlier in the thread makes the point:


And various statements about academic freedom and the rights of professors over the years have made similar points about the professional responsibilities of professors to be cautious about expressing overtly personal views:



Note here that this doesn't imply an absolute BAN on faculty expressing personal views; rather such expression should not be "one-sided." That's where I think a lot of faculty go wrong.

 

you seem to be missing the point that academics have free speech; but at the same time have professional responsibilities not to misuse that right to free speech in particular contexts. One especially important context is inside the classroom. One should not abuse the power one has over a captive audience of 18- to 22-year olds who are perhaps in your classroom because you teach a required course. That is a very different context than being invited to speak as a guest speaker at a colloquium where the whole point of the invitation is to hear your views on possibly controversial topics.

 

I will also add the personal observation that in my experience, faculty with tenure enjoy far more "academic freedom" and "free speech" leeway than junior faculty, adjuncts, lecturers, research associates, etc., without tenure

 

not sure they do

again, one's individual right to free speech as a citizen stands in contrast to one's professional responsibilities in the role as a scholar/teacher.

not sure I understand the point you're making here

sure. Students have no "right" to employ the heckler's veto for example: the Cornell students that shouted down Ann Coulter have no right to do that. They still retain free speech rights, though. I'm not sure I understand what additional point you're trying to make here.

 

here is an actual free speech case:

Verdict Against Auburn University in Economics Professor's First Amendment Retaliation Lawsuit

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/1...ofessors-first-amendment-retaliation-lawsuit/