Abstract:
At this polarized moment, universities must guard against any appearance of student indoctrination, lest they risk external interventions that would deprive their faculty of academic freedom. In this essay, I reflect on the nature of academic freedom, including its statutory limits, its distinction from “freedom of speech,” and its precarity during times of polarization. I argue that universities should affirm their instructors’ rights to opine on the issues of the day, while at the same time encouraging them to implement what I call “bracketed viewpoint diversity” in their course syllabi.
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