"Academic Freedom: Who Needs It? Who Deserves It"

Freedom of expression is the enabling precondition of the academic enterprise, for where people hesitate to speak their mind, critical thinking has no purchase and the university cannot even begin to carry out its mission. That is why academic freedom, together with its material complement, tenure, have become defining features of the modern American university. Supreme Court decisions since the 1950s recognize in freedom of academic inquiry a principal means of safeguarding free expression throughout American society. Yet on this campus and many others complacency about the rights of academic freedom and carelessness about the obligations it entails reign supreme. We forget how recently these rights came into being, how fragile they are, and what it takes to justify them in the eyes of an increasingly skeptical public. They will not survive if faculties allow themselves to become nothing more than assemblies of free-riding prima donnas, too busy promoting their individual careers to take part in faculty governance.

Panel Discussants

John Ambler, Political Science

Sidney Burrus, Dean, Brown School of Engineering

Moshe Vardi, Computer Science