Rethinking the idea of academic freedom

Suddenly, it seems everyone in the academy today — left, right and center — is an advocate of academic freedom. Whether on the right, as an appeal against “cancellation,” or on the left, in response to the demonization of DEI, appeals to free expression are suddenly much in vogue.

Given that the invocation of academic freedom becomes fashionable only when academics feel that their views are under threat, we might conclude that such appeals are ultimately cynical. For conservatives, yesterday’s complaints against the silencing by “wokeness” appear increasingly replaced by calls for forced conversion of elite institutions to a certain worldview. For institutions like Harvard — which only recently was amenable to “cancel culture” — academic freedom is suddenly viewed as a shield against th