The Need for a Charter of Academic Independence and Freedom

Universities are Abandoning Their Most Sacred Principles

The sanctioning of speech that has emerged with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which some have described as “the new McCarthyism,” has exposed an alarming, existing trend toward authoritarianism and suppression of speech on university campuses. Greg Lukianoff, coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind and, more recently, The Canceling of the American Mind, claims that the last decade has been even worse than McCarthyism.

According to a 1958 study, about one hundred professors were fired over a ten-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties.  In the past nine years, however, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was almost twice that number.

In the late 1950’s, when McCarthyism ended, only 9 percent of social scientists said they had toned down what they had written because of fear that it might cause controversy. Now, according to a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey, 59 percent of professors are at least “somewhat likely” to self-censor in academic publications.  With respect to lectures or talks intended for a general audience, that figure was 79 percent.

The problem is growing worse: 38 percent of faculty said they were more likely to self-censor at the end of 2022 than they were in September 2020.

In the most recent FIRE “2024 College Free Speech Rankings,” Harvard University, where I did my training, obtained the lowest possible score, 0.00, and is the only school with an “Abysmal” rating.  Yale University, where I was a student and then a professor, denounced its own “Woodward Report,” which delineated its free speech policies since 1975—in order to dismiss my lawsuit for wrongful termination, based on Alan Dershowitz’s complaint about my public speech.  In doing so, Yale stated that the renowned Report was merely a “statement of principles,” and “not a set of contractual promises.”  In part because of its handling of my lawsuit, my alma mater earned FIRE’s “Lifetime Censorship Award” in 2022.

These dreadful records should not be acceptable.  To reverse some of these disturbing trends, universities should publish a Charter of Academic Freedom and Independence, making their commitment to basic principles of Academic Freedom clear and thus refrain from replying to pressures brought upon the university by any special interest group, media, or those who financially contribute to the university.

Freedom of Speech entails the essence of university learning, inquiry, debate, and teaching.  It is essential for both students and faculty.  It is understood in all cases that students and faculty speak for themselves and not for the university.  Universities represent an important voice, and succumbing to a forced reply in times of conflict is what opponents desire, in order to control the narrative and to make way for unspeakable acts.

Such a Charter should include:

Universities not only should but must encourage free and open public debate about key issues—past, present, and future—and anyone who prevents such from taking place will be subject to firm university policies and if necessary legal enforcement.

No violence or threats of violence of any kind will be tolerated at the university.

Demonstrations, including posters and other forms of protest, will not only be allowed but welcome on the Campus.  Universities must be models of civil discourse, where differences are worked out at the level of logical argument and rational persuasion.  At public forums or debates, no shouting, bullying, threatening, or any form of harassment will be acceptable or tolerated so as to ensure strict adherence to free speech principles for everyone. 

It will be considered unacceptable if any financial contributors to the University bring pressure on the administration to take any actions against any students or faculty with regard to free speech, with university administrators indicating in advance should any of this take place.  It should also be a policy to make such pressures be publicly known, and no private secretive meetings be held against any persons exercising their Freedom of Speech.

With regard to financial contributors to the University, a yearly list will be released each January of the previous year’s contributors, the amount, the use, any restrictions of any kind, and what members of the administration or faculty met with such entities or persons.  This list will include all forms of contributions including from corporations, government-related bodies, and any foreign country-connected sources.

Whatever the issues may be, no matter how controversial, these basic standards and considerations will apply.  A public university body will be set up to deal openly with any substantial violations of these policies with a peer-established and publicly known appeals process.

Citizens and intellectuals should be able to stand up for key people and groups when they speak for oppressed groups, especially when they are being attacked, threatened, vilified, and pressured to be dismissed or to have to resign. 

The point is that a self-governing public knows that the basic issue is not whether any of us agree or not with what individual journalists and academics say at any given time.  Rather, the basic issue is that we should allow for and engage in collective decision making through discussion and education.  To do so, learned individuals and leaders of bodies must be able to bring up important matters without inhibition from fears of social or institutional retribution.

That is not only the essence of real free speech, but a basic pillar of real democracy.

Academic Freedom of Speech without intimidation by political and special interest groups is quintessential not only to the proper functioning of our universities but to the basic health of our democracy.  Why is Academic Free Speech important?  It is important for the preservation of truth, since there is nothing that subjugates a people as much as the withholding of truth, as happens in times of collective psychosis (collective detachment from reality)—a condition often generated and enforced in times of tyranny.  Journalists and academics are important vanguards of the truth, when, as anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko said, the most potent weapon of the tyrant is the mind of the oppressed—and the mind is tyranny’s battleground for power.