Although the University of Chicago is renowned for its Principles of Free Expression, as well as as its other foundational principles, a number of faculty were concerned about the lack of both formal enforcement procedures for these principles as well as a faculty-designed body to promulgate them. In my view, three of the Principles are paramount, constituting the Trifecta of Freedom of Expression:
The Principles of Free Expression: assuring complete freedom expression except when that expression is intended to block other people’s expression. Over 100 schools have now adopted some version of these principles.
The Kalven Principles. These assure that the University’s administration, and its units like departments, do not make any political, ideological, or moral pronouncements save for those that directly affect the workings of the University. Thus the University did not make any statements about recent Supreme Court decisions, but did defend DACA because it affects the well-being of some of our students. This principle is in place to assure that nobody’s speech is “chilled” because they don’t adhere to political and ideological views considered “official”
The Shils Report. These are criteria for academic appointments and appointments. The Report specifies that there are only four criteria for hiring faculty or promoting them: research, teaching and training, service, and contribution to the intellectual community. This has been interpreted NOT to include adherence to specific ideological criteria like DEI, so we require no DEI statements for promotion or hiring.
Now I’m delighted to announce the formation of a faculty-run organization to monitor and promulgate these and our other foundational principles; it’s The Chicago Forum, and you can find the overview here. The “launch event” is tomorrow and Friday, and includes a number of good speakers including our University President, several faculty, journalists like Ross Douthat, an employee of FIRE, and faculty from other venues. Even if you’re not a member of the University, you can still register for the launch by going here; all you need is your email (put “other” as your affiliation if you’re not from the U of C).
Here’s a description of the Forum’s brief. which isn’t so much to put out fires (like the Harvard committee) as to ensure that free expression is promulgated constantly to everyone. I expect, for example, that it will help construct an introductory unit on free expression to all first-year students. But I do expect that it may intercede if there is interference with free expression or academic freedom on campus. The brief:
At its outset, the University of Chicago was founded upon the idea that academic freedom and freedom of expression serve as the bedrock of education and the wellspring of discovery. While a shared commitment to free inquiry and expression is vital to our university’s culture, the integrity of its practice should never be taken for granted. Each successive generation of faculty, students, and staff has taken on the necessary, often challenging work of giving these principles meaning throughout the University’s history.
The University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression builds on our historic commitment and practices to provide a focal point for understanding and applying free expression, in academia and in the broader culture, in the United States and abroad. The Forum’s mission is to promote the understanding, practice, and advancement of free and open discourse, in collaboration with faculty and the broader university community.
Other activities, described on this page, include the support of fellowships and postdocs, grants to fund “opportunities to support faculty and student research, practice, and experimentation with free inquiry and expression”; the fostering of “conversation around free inquiry and expression through multiple communications channels and the ongoing publication of essays, social media platforms, and its podcast”; a page of “news” that includes all University-published events bearing on free expression; and an “Academic Freedom Summer,” described this way:
The Academic Freedom Summer will build upon and expand faculty understanding and practice of free inquiry and expression both as teachers impart knowledge and as exemplars of the habits and virtues of knowledge growth and flourishing. The Academic Freedom Summer
So it goes. We fell to #13 on FIRE’s list of best free-expression colleges this year, but we were #1 last year, and were always in the top 4. Let’s hope this will help buttress our reputation as the best free-speech school in America.
Very welcome news indeed! In Europe the situation is even worse than here; in Switzerland (according to APNews) a right-wing provocateur (whom many will consider dangerous, extreme, unhinged and therefore unworthy of any defense) has been sentenced to two months in prison as well as a substantial fine for having called a female activist opposed to his opinions a “fat lesbian”.
Is truth of the assertion not a defence?
Good to hear about this. My wife—a U of C alumna—got an e-mail announcing this event, indicating that the University wants the entire community to know about it.
This is a wonderful proactive initiative by the faculty to emphasize the traditional Chicago way across a change in administration. I am sure that it will be done the right way as opposed to the Princeton(?) freshman orientation that was featured in WEIT a week or so ago. Could be a template for other schools that have dropped in FIRE ranking this year…like my own alma mater, William and Mary. But I no longer have any contacts there and do not know how to get news or an opportunity to participate in the Chicago activity to anyone there who has any juice.
If the Kalven principles can be overridden for something that “affects the well-being of some of our students”, that opens the door to official pronouncements in favor of every claim of the authoritarian Left. “Harm” and “violence” are their public rationale for everything they do.
Colleges need to go farther, though, in order to get back to the mission of advancing (actual) knowledge. That requires purging postmodernist ideas – otherwise the CSJ juggernaut will likely continue.
And it’s right in the Kalven statement:
“From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it,
threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.”
Nothing bespeaks a commitment to free inquiry and free speech the way “purging” ideas does, however vacuous one may deem such ideas to be.
This is the Paradox of Tolerance. It’s not that postmodernism is vacuous, it is that it denies the existence of objective knowledge. In Cynical Theories, Pluckrose and Lindsay describe how CSJ turned this into an active campaign to undermine the pursuit of knowledge. Advocating such ideas should be considered a violation of the Shils criteria.
Glad to hear about this. Hopefully this will spread to all the universities, even the Ivy’s. The ‘woke’ attack on free speech is closely akin to the old McCarthy hysteria, and hopefully will soon disappear.