Category: freedom of expression

The “anti-Zios” are back

November 19, 2025 • 10:45 am

A lot of the protests and kerfuffles on campus two years ago involved a student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  Their favorite metier seemed to be disrupting access through the Quad, using bullhorns to shout slogans (“river to the sea. . . ” etc.), and in general touting the actions of Hamas and demonizing Israel.  Now when these actions are done according to campus rules, they’re fine—it’s free speech, and that kind of expression is of the glories of our University.  But often SJP people are involved in violating campus regulations; in April of last year I documented four instances of the organization or its members violating campus regulations. Those included sit-ins that constituted trespassing and led to the arrest of both students and faculty. But, this being Chicago with a woke mayor, all charges were dropped.

What about the rest of the violations? There was almost no discipline: the University, as noted in the link above, simply gave SJP a slap on the wrist, for the last thing the University of Chicago wants to see is officials or police “laying hands on students”. Below is the “punishment” that the Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct meted out to SJP after they shouted down a Jewish “teach-in” in 2023, violating campus rules.


This isn’t even a slap on the wrist, but a tap on the wrist. It’s even lighter punishment than the warning the cops give you if they catch you speeding a little.

In light of SJP’s repeated violations of university rules, I wrote a letter to the student newspaper in January of last year asking “Should Students for Justice in Palestine be a recognized student organization?” I provided no answer save to say that the University should mete out genuine punishment to people who repeatedly violate campus rules about public demonstrations.  The University did get serious once, when it used the UC police—the Chicago police refused to participate—in taking down the illegal encampment that defaced our quad and prevented free access to buildings.

Things have been quiet for the last year, and probably for two reasons: Hamas has been trounced in Gaza, and a lot of the participants in anti-Israel demonstrations appear to be outsiders rather than members of the University community.  Demonstrators may well be afraid to have a public presence because Trump sent ICE to Chicago, and if you entered the country illegally, now is not the time you want to fall into the hands of the authorities.

Regardless, I continue to promote free speech that adheres to our policies while at the same time deploring the hatred and antisemitism that seems to motivate groups and individuals like the SJP.  And so they’ve put up a legal “installation” on our quad again. It’s okay that they did so, but it’s a performative, misguided, and hate-filled “installation.”  It went up a few days ago for a week, and here are some photos:

Note that it was  erected by SJP.

What we have here is a work of art accusing one John Kirby of genocide. Well, I didn’t know who John Kirby was, but Wikipedia says he was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who later took up positions in the media and also in the government under Democratic Presidents:

In the Biden administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 2021 to 2022 and as White House National Security Communications Advisor from 2022 to 2025. He worked as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN from 2017 to 2021. In the second Obama administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary from 2013 to 2015 and as Spokesperson for the United States Department of State and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 2015 to 2017.

Kirby has also just been appointed as director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, a nonpartisan venue for free discussion aimed at inspiring students to go into politics and public service.  It has invited people from all sides of the ideological spectrum to speak, though when someone who doesn’t hate Israel speaks, miscreants sometimes have demonstrations outside the building or have even invaded the building (they were heaved out).  Again, those demonstrations are legal if they don’t violate university rules, but they sometimes have (I have heard of no punsihments).

At any rate, Kirby’s position in the military, and some words he said, prominently displayed in the first photo below, convinced SJP that he is complicit in GENOCIDE.  In fact, Kirby has been careful about the use of the word than has SJP, applying it only to Hamas. This is from the Guardian when Kirby was working under Biden:

Challenged at a White House briefing to confront the term “Genocide Joe” by some protesters to described Biden, Kirby, who had previously ruled out “drawing red lines” for Israel’s actions in Gaza, embarked on an animated exposition.

“People can say what they want on the sidewalk and we respect that. That’s what the first amendment’s about,” he said. “But this word genocide’s getting thrown around in a pretty inappropriate way by lots of different folks. What Hamas wants, make no mistake about it, is genocide. They want to wipe Israel off the map.

“And they’ve said that they’re not going to stop. What happened on the 7th of October is going to happen again and again and again. And what happened on the 7th of October? Murder; slaughter of innocent people in their homes or at a music festival. That’s genocidal intentions.

“Yes, there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza … And yes, we continue to urge the Israelis to be as careful and cautious as possible. But Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel’s not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. If we’re going to start using that word – fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”

There are three quotes from Kirby (one of them fell over last night), including one that apparently refers to the U.S. providing aid to Israel (second photo). The other two seem to show him claiming that Israel did not violate international human rights law (you can read them by clocking twice on the first photo to enlarge it).

Two points:

1.)  This is a performative “installation” that accomplishes nothing. There was never a “genocide,” and even if you think there was, there’s now a cease-fire.

2.)  Why do you never see students demonstrating against a real genocide: the one that’s a huge goal of Hamas, which wants to kill all the Jews and wipe out Israel? (Read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, especially the introduction and Article Seven.)

3.)  It shows, in my view, that hatred of Jews and Israel hasn’t disappeared here (who would ever think that, anyway?) but is bubbling under the surface, waiting to emerge should the conflict in Gaza begin again.

4.) These installations, while they should be legal, nevertheless forment the atmosphere of hatred that, in my view, keeps Jewish students (who never erect similar “installations” about Hamas) from speaking their minds or wearing paraphernalia like Stars of David and yarmulkes (I’ve heard this directly from Jewish students).  This kind of intimidation—which in America also chills discussions about abortion and gender issues,—still falls within University regulations, so there’s nothing to do about it, but according to statistics, it does chill speech.

The Humanist Society of Australia withdraws support from Steve Pinker’s book tour

September 30, 2025 • 8:45 am

The repercussions of my kerFFRFle with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) continue, long after I thought the fracas had died down. You may recall the details, which are summarized in a post on this site. In short, the FFRF published a blog post by one of its interns, Kat Grant, called “What is a woman?” (The post is still up.)  Its aim was to define who is a “woman”, a definition that seems to have become very difficult for some people. (Three words will suffice: “Adult human female.”) But Grant’s article ends with the sentence, “A woman is whoever she says she is.”  That defines the term using self-identification alone, so that anyone, including a biological male, can be a “woman” if he so claims.

As a biologist and member of the FFRF Honorary Board, I asked the FFRF if I could write a brief rebuttal to this claim, a claim that flies in the face of the biological definition of a woman: an adult human being with the reproductive equipment evolved to make large gametes (i.e., eggs).

I was given permission to publish the piece, which I called “Biology is not bigotry”, an archived version of which you can see here or here. It dealt largely with the biological definition of sex and emphasized, as the title notes, that being transgender should not lead to the loss of one’s rights or dignity—save in the small subset of cases in which transgender rights conflict with the rights of others, as in sports participation or whether a convicted person is sent to a men’s or women’s prisons. (I also noted that by taking on this issue, the FFRF was engaging in mission creep, abandoning its goal of keeping church and state separate and educating the public on the First Amendment.)

My letter—again, published with the FFRF’s permission and vetting—was posted on the FFRF’s blog as a response to Grant’s piece—for about a day. Facing opposition from some of its staff, the FFRF then took my letter down without notifying me or even answering my inquiries about its disappearance.  At that point I had no choice but to resign from the FFRF’s Honorary Board.  At the same time, but independently, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, also members of the Honorary Board, also resigned. In response, and for reasons that aren’t clear, the FFRF dissolved the entire Honorary Board, though, curiously, the Board still appears on the FFRF’s site.

Well, that was pretty much the end of it, though my letter led to defamatory and misguided slurs that I am a “transphobe”, which occasionally leads to my getting unpleasant emails or website comments. Trans issues, it seems, are immune to rational discussion unless you buy the entire gender-activist program promoted by “progressives.”

I haven’t quite figured out why this one issue raises such rancor, leading to the demonization of those who try to rationally contest “progressive” gender activism. J. K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock (OBE), for example, have been consigned to perdition—and Stock forced to resign her job at the University of Sussex—after being demonized for their “gender-critical feminism” and views that male self-identification as women is inimical to society as it can infringe on the rights of biological women.

The slur of “transphobia” attached to critics is one lesson from this sad story, but there’s now a second one: your damnation will follow you for life, no matter how hard you try to clarify your views on the issue. And that is instantiated by what just happened to Steve Pinker.

Yesterday I got an email from Desh Amila, a producer, educator, and entrepreneur, one of whose activities is arranging public appearances of famous humanists or nonbelievers.  As such, he was setting up Steve Pinker’s tour in Australia to promote his recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. . . : Common knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Here is part of Amila’s email, which I reproduce with permission:

. . . . .My name is Desh Amila. We have exchanged emails in the past regarding Richard Dawkins and Coleman Hughes. I am also the organiser for our mutual colleague Steven Pinker’s upcoming speaking tour in Australia. I’m writing to you today because one of your articles has found itself at the centre of a disappointing, though telling, controversy.

We recently had the Humanist Society of Australia officially withdraw its partnership and support for the tour. After several days of internal debate, their CEO informed us that they were unable to reach “consensus” on how to handle Professor Pinker’s public support for your article, “Biology is not Bigotry.”

The issue was initially raised by their “Rainbow Atheists” community, and it appears the organisation ultimately chose to withdraw rather than stand by the principles of open inquiry and free discussion.

It strikes me as a powerful, real-world case study of the ideological capture and institutional retreat from science that you so frequently and eloquently document on your website. The irony of a Humanist organisation being unable to even support a tour associated with a rational discussion of biology is profound.

I have already briefed Steve on the matter. I wanted to ensure you were aware of it as well, given your article was the explicit catalyst. Of course, you are welcome to share or write about this story if you see fit; it seems a particularly well-documented example of the chill spreading through these organisations.

Desh is right: this is a huge irony.  The Humanist Society of Australia is of course free to support or not support anyone they want, but I can’t think of a more prominent humanist than Pinker, and of course he is NOT a transphobe. His resignation from the FFRF’s Honorary Board was prompted by free-speech and mission creep issues, not by some attempt to “erase” trans people. The Humanists Society of Australia should be ashamed of itself for damning Pinker in this way.  Apparently some members will brook no opposition to their views, and thus start engaging in “cancel culture.”  I repeat: I know Steve Pinker well, and he is NOT a transphobe.  Nor is he a Nazi, a fascist, or—as I was called the other day)—a “goose-stepper.” Historically he has been one of Harvard’s biggest donors to the Democratic Party.

I have seen the Humanist Society’s original letter, which, as Desh reported, says that it can’t support Steve’s book tour because the organization couldn’t reach a consensus about how to regard Steve’s support for my piece on “Biology is Not Bigotry”. In the absence of a consensus, they withdrew their support (I think that means money) for Steve’s tour. (I am characterizing the letter as I haven’t asked for permission to reproduce it.) Because of this one action, Pinker is doomed to suffer eternally, at least in Australia.

This is one example of the quasi-religious nature of gender ideology that I described in a WSJ op-ed.  As I wrote in that piece, transgender ideology

. . . makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as “transphobes”), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics (J.K. Rowling is the best-known example). Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say.

A later email to Desh from the Humanist Society of Australia added that the reservations about Pinker’s support for my letter were particularly raised by the  Australian “Rainbow Atheist” community, citing a link to what was apparently a rebuttal to my now-vanished FFRF piece, a link that now goes nowhere!

The good news is that Steve’s Australian tour will go on, as there is still ample support for it.

The bad news is the Humanist Society of Australia has gone the way of other humanist/atheist/secular societies, including the FFRF. In fact, the “progressive” ideological capture of these societies seems to have no exception—save for the Center for Inquiry, which has admirably resisted a mindless adoption of the ideological Zeitgeist.

The desire to show one’s virtue by publicly flaunting the au courant ideology of the far Left seems to have few exceptions, even among Leftists. Those on my own side of the political spectrum—also the Left—are too intimidated to speak up against ideological capture of societies like the Australian Humanists.

Bill Maher: The price of free speech (clearly “offense”)

September 15, 2025 • 11:45 am

Here’s the latest “New Rules” interlude from Bill Maher’s Real Time show, called “New Rule: The price of free speech.” It’s a big hooray for the First Amendment, including Maher’s opposing (as I do) Trump’s ban on flag-burning. But he also call’s out the Left’s attempted curbs on free speech (I didn’t know that Lisa Cook, the Fed governor Trump’s trying to fire, herself tried to get a professor fired for being “less than rapturous about Martin Luther King Day).

He also calls out the quashing of free speech in the UK based on tweets—”hate tweets”—a kind of censorship that has spread to countries like Belgium and the Netherland.   Maher goes on to mention those who are critical of some gender activism, including J. K. Rowling and Dave Chapelle, but says he’d “go to the mat” for people’s right to say things that other people find offensive.  Even the Nazi-hailing pug dog that got its owner arrested makes an appearance.

It’s a pretty funny one, and though there’s not much new, it’s heartening to hear a stalwart defense of free speech from time to time. But the UK really needs to have its own version of the First Amendment.

FIRE’s new rankings of American universities and colleges: freedom of speech and expression is in trouble

September 9, 2025 • 9:30 am

At midnight last night, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its annual rankings of American colleges and universities for how open they are to freedom of speech and expression.  Although I’m happy to report that the University of Chicago weighs in at #3 out of 257 schools ranked, the grade we got was only a C, reflecting the general overall decrease in freedom in American colleges over the last year. (The #1 school, Claremont McKenna College, got only a grade of B-.) The survey involved 68,510 students, and I think it should be taken seriously, for the better schools for expression fall near the top and the worst ones (e.g., Harvard, Barnard, and Columbia) are at the rock bottom.

You can see the introduction by clicking on the headline below, where you can look up any school that was surveyed.  Further, you can download the full 41-page report here and read about the survey methodology here. The pdf showing the survey methodology is here. I won’t go much into the methodology except to say that involves a combination of administrative censorship, self-censorship, how comfortable students are expressing views that are seen as controversial, official school speech and expression policies, willingness to tolerate views students find “offensive,” how much disruption of speech occurs, and, for the first time this year, whether schools adhere to the “Chicago Statement” of free expression and whether the colleges has adopted “institutional neutrality”: the refusal of a school to make official ideological, political, or moral pronouncements unless they directly affect the mission of the school. (Kudos to FIRE for including adherence to these two policies! They give big points to schools who adopt them.)

Oh, and you can check your own college by going to this site.

Here’s the report’s executive summary that I don’t want to repeat in my own words. As you see, several measures of freedom of expression have decreased, including acceptability of students to shouting down a speaker or preventing others from hearing a speaker, as well as the acceptability of using violence to stop a speech or letting their school invite speakers dealing with six controversial topics (three “conservative” topics and three “liberal” ones).

KEY FINDINGS: 

  1. Claremont McKenna College is this year’s top-ranked school, its second time earning the honor. Purdue University, the University of Chicago, Michigan Technological University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder round out the top five. 
  2. Barnard College is this year’s lowest-ranked school. Columbia University, Indiana University, the University of Washington, and Northeastern University round out the bottom five. 
  3. The average overall score (58.63) is a failing grade in a college course. Overall, 166 of the 257 schools surveyed got an F for their speech climate, while only 11 schools received a speech climate grade of C or higher. 
  4. Since 2020, CMC, Purdue, UChicago, Michigan Tech, CU Boulder, North Carolina State University, Florida State University, the University of Virginia, George Mason University, and Kansas State University have all consistently performed better than most of their peers.
  5. Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, and Yale University all improved significantly this year, ranking 7, 35, and 58 respectively. Harvard University, which was ranked last the previous two years, also improved to rank 245. 
  6. Over half of students (53%) say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a difficult topic to “have an open and honest conversation about on campus.” On 21 of the campuses surveyed, at least 75% of students said this — including 90% of students at Barnard. 
  7. The percentage of students saying it is acceptable to shout down a speaker, block entry to a campus speech, or use violence to stop a campus speech all increased since last year and are at record highs. 
  8. For the first time ever, a majority of students oppose their school allowing any of the six controversial speakers they were asked about — three controversial conservative speakers and three controversial liberal ones. 

Here are the top ten schools in order from best to worst:

Claremont McKenna College
Purdue University
University of Chicago
Michigan Technological University
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of North Caroina, Greensboro
Vanderbilt University
Appalachian State University
Eastern Kentucky University
North Carolina State University

Note that Vanderbilt University rose 133 points, from #140 to #7.  A lot of this is due to its adopting institutional neutrality (only 33 schools have done so), and that has to be credited largely to its newish President, Daniel Diermeier, who was previously Provost at the University of Chicago. FIRE says this:

Much of Vanderbilt’s meteoric rise up the rankings from 140 last year to 7 overall this year can be attributed to its adoption of the Chicago Principles and a stance of institutional neutrality years ago, along with its more recent reform of its lone “yellow light” policy. Yet, these are not the only reasons for Vanderbilt’s improvement. This year, significantly more students at the university said that they can have an open and honest conversation about topics like abortion, climate change, freedom of speech, hate speech, religion, and transgender rights. On top of that, more students this year say this about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Willingness to discuss topics and not demonize speakers, as well as lack of self censorship, play a big role in these rankings. The University of Chicago rose two points: it was #5 last year.

Here are the bottom ten schools in order from worst to slightly better. Note that Harvard was at the bottom last year, ranked as “abysmal”, but it moved up a full 12 points to rank 245 out of 257, getting a grade of “F”:

Barnard College
Columbia University
Indiana University
University of Washington
Northeastern University
University of California, Davis
Boston College
New York University
Middlebury College
Loyola University Chicago

Barnard and Columbia are rated at the bottom because they did not handle free-speech violations well or consistently, and both schools suffered from having a dreadful climate for free speech. (I’ve written a bit over the past few years on the trouble on these campuses and the adherence of many students to Hamas and its policies, which cows other students from expressing themselves.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Williams College, where Luana teaches. It’s always been in the low middle of the rankings, and remains so this year, with a rank of 166 (out of 257). having dropped ten points since last year.  Here’s the FIRE assessment:

Williams College ranks 166 out of 257 schools in the 2026 College Free Speech Rankings, earning a score of 56 and an F speech climate grade. The college continues to operate under a “yellow light” Spotlight rating.

Student perceptions place Williams in the top 25 on “Disruptive Conduct,” signaling greater opposition to tactics that shut down speakers compared to other schools. The ranking for “Comfort Expressing Ideas” also improved enough to move out of last year’s bottom 50.

Williams could improve by revising its written speech policies to earn a “green light” Spotlight rating, adopting a free speech statement based on the Chicago Statement, and adopting an official commitment to institutional neutrality.

As far as I know, Williams refuses so far to adopt either policy. Its President has stated that while she herself favors free speech and will not makes statements that violate institutional neutrality, she will not push for official adoption of these statements by Williams.  That is very bizarre, and bespeaks an administration who follows but will not lead.

I’ll give a few bar graphs and plots (there are many more in the report) showing what I consider the most interesting data. First, a bar graph showing the decrease over the last year (across all schools) in students’ willingness to allow speakers on three conservative topics (left side) and three liberal topics (right side). Dark bars are from 2024, lighter ones from this last year. Notice that saying that trans people have a mental disorder and BLM is a hate group  are the views evoking the most pushback, though speakers saying that “children should be able to transition without parental consent”–a “liberal” stand–gets less pushback (higher bars mean more acceptance of speakers):

The plot below is the one that most disturbs me. It shows the rise in percentage of students who would accept illegal and antispeech tactics to stop speakers whose views they don’t like. Look at the number of students who tolerate shouting down a speaker (71%!), blocking other students from hearing a speech (54%), and even using violence to stop a speech (34%).  These have all risen 5-10% since 2021.  The high values are simply unacceptable to those who favor free speech.

The summary ends before the colleges are ranked, and FIRE says this about why schools are going downhill on the free-speech slope:

Harvard is far from alone. While it has earned a great deal of attention for its consistently low rankings, most of the 257 colleges and universities in this year’s report receive similarly poor grades when it comes to fostering a healthy climate for free expression. In fact, only 11 institutions score a C or higher, and many of the nation’s most prominent schools fall well below that mark. If Harvard’s modest gains are worth noting, they also underscore just how low the national baseline remains.

The 2026 rankings reveal a bleak picture: 166 of the 257 schools evaluated received an overall score below 60 — earning a failing grade for their campus speech climate. This group includes some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions: Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and both the University of California at Berkeley and in Los Angeles. Notably, UCLA also holds the distinction of being the lowest-ranked “green light” school this year.

Another 64 schools fall into the D range, with scores ranging from 60 to 69. Among them are several “green light” institutions — schools that earn top marks for their written speech policies, yet where the day-to-day climate for free expression remains flawed. This list includes Duke University, Emory University, Texas A&M University, the University of Florida, the University of Maryland, and Washington University in St Louis.

In short, even the so-called success stories struggle to meet a minimal basic standard. Only 11 schools earned a campus speech climate grade of C or higher. Their average score? A modest 75, and we give a golf clap to schools like Purdue University whose administration has long been a vocal proponent of free speech and, last year, adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, proclaiming that “it itself is not a critic.”

. . . These findings should continue to raise alarm. The topranked school for freedom of speech got a B-, the only time any school has even gotten above a C+. This means that the vast majority of American colleges and universities are failing to protect and foster free expression. In an era when open inquiry and dissent are more essential than ever, campus speech climates are not just unhealthy — they are in free fall.

Given this dire and worsening situation, what can we do if we’re members of a university?  There’s not much we can do at the moment to affect the views of students towards invited speakers or their willingness to speak their minds, but there are two things that would help: get your school to adopt Chicago’s Principles of Free Expression and also the doctrine of Institutional Neutrality, as expressed in our Kalven Report. Both of these policies are in place to ensure that students feel free to express their views without fear of reprisal from the university.

In the meantime, rah rah for Claremont McKenna and boo for Columbia, Barnard, and, of course, Harvard. (My undergraduate alma mater, The College of William and Mary, did pretty well in the rankings, coming in at number 33 but getting an overall an overall grade of D+.)

More on academic freedom versus free speech: the homily ends

May 22, 2025 • 11:15 am

This is the last (I hope) of three posts on a topic I’m reading about: academic freedom (I have to be on a panel about the topic in June). Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. I won’t reprise what I said in those posts except to summarize their main points:

Post 1: The “clash of ideas” touted by Mill and others as the primary virtue of free speech, assuming that this clash will produce the truth, is in fact ineffective at furnishing us with the truth, for truth is ascertained not by a collision of ideas given equal weight, but from empirical investigation (“science construed broadly”). Nevertheless, free speech is a sine qua non for democracy, whose working reflects popular opinion, and popular opinion is the foundational turtle of democracy.

Post 2: Academic freedom, the right of scholars to study, research, and teach what they want without interference, is essential for finding the truth about anything (“truth” is what exists in the universe). This does involve the clash of ideas mentioned above, but not all ideas are regarded as equal under academic freedom: some have more credibility than others, viz., evolution vs. creationism. Further, unlike the egalitarianism of the public square, academic freedom assumes a meritocracy and also involves scholarly behavior that would seem to (but doesn’t) violate the First Amendment, like compelled speech (a professor, for example, must teach her topic and not some other topic).  Finally, scholarly standards differ from discipline to discipline, and so the notion of “what academic freedom entails” will also differ:  “success” in doing literary criticism, for example, is very different from “success” in molecular biology.  I maintain further, that the notion of “truth” isn’t relevant to much of humanities, for example literary criticism, music, art, or ethics. There is no empirical truth to be found there, but nevertheless the clash of ideas is still essential to dispel error. (“You can’t prove that Spinoza said that.”)

The more I read, the more disagreement I find about what academic freedom really means and how it relates to free speech. Is it covered by the First Amendment? (some say “yes”)—or is it something different? Is academic freedom something possessed by professors, universities, students, or all of the above?  I would answer to the first part “no,” since “freedom of thought” isn’t covered by the First Amendment. But I read last night that the Supreme Court has deemed academic freedom not only a First-Amendment right, but one that applies to all universities, be they public or private. (The First Amendment applies only to public universities, since they’re an arm of the government, though many universities voluntarily adhere to its standards).

As I said, every private school, including Hamline University where a professor was fired for showing an image of Mohammed, has academic freedom for its faculty; the fired Hamline professor was defended by many (including the AAUP) for having her academic freedom violated, and she settled with Hamline. (The President of the College subsequently resigned.

I emphasize that when I say that many areas of the humanities  are incapable of finding truth, that is not to denigrate them or deem them inferior to science (see a list of their areas here). For humanities have their own ambit. Philosophy keeps us thinking straight and prevents us from falling into error, literature puts us into the shoes and minds of other people, and music and art give us beauty. Life without humanities would be dull indeed, and I’ve always said that in general scientists know more about and appreciate the humanities more than humanities people know about and appreciate science.

This leaves one question: what about institutional neutrality—the principle that universities should not make ideological or political pronouncements unless they bear directly on the mission of the university? (This was of course first embodied in Chicago’s Kalven Principle.)  The purpose of this principle is to avoid the chilling of speech that would occur if a university establishes an “official” position that students and faculty would be loath to violate. (Everyone, of course, is free to voice their personal opinion according to the First Amendment: you just can’t do it in the name of the University. And our late President Bob Zimmer said that he was reluctant to give his own personal opinion because it could be taken to represent the University of Chicago’s position.).

By impeding the chilling of speech, Kalven also impedes the chilling of research and teaching. If, for example, a college held the position that sex was not binary, and that there was a spectrum of sex in humans, researchers would be reluctant to either publish, work on, or make that claim. (The President of Spectrum U. would be Agustín Fuentes.)

Thus institutional neutrality is the rope that ties together free speech and academic freedom.  Any university worth its salt—one that wants to foster discourse and consider all ideas on their merits, however offensive—should adhere to the three prongs of Kalven, academic freedom, and free speech. It’s a pity that so few Universities follow all three (only 30 American universities have adopted institutional neutrality; and that’s out of 2,637 four-year colleges!).

And so endeth this homily.

Why academic freedom is more important than free speech in finding the truth

May 21, 2025 • 10:30 am

In my first post of this series of two I maintained that First-Amendment-style freedom of speech, or something close to it, is necessary for the functioning of a democracy. But free speech is also touted not just as a prerequisite for having democracy, but a necessity for producing the “clash of ideas” that will give rise to the truth.  My contention in the first post is that while free speech is politically vital, it cannot by itself lead to finding the truth. For that you need what I call “expanded academic freedom”:  the right of individuals (usually academics or scholars) to think, write, and speak whatever they want. For this second endeavor is, unlike free speech, the one that allows people to look at the universe and see what is empirically true. (As I said earlier, the “truth” in my view, and that of the OED, is “something that conforms to fact or reality”, and knowledge, defined as “justified true belief”, is simply widely accepted truth.)

These are the two linchpins for finding and disseminating truth. Academic freedom guarantees the right to investigate reality and find out what is (provisionally) true, while freedom of speech guarantees the right to promulgate what you’ve found out. They work together to find the truth and (also important) make it publicly visible and publicly acknowledged: that is, they work together to produce knowledge.

I have construed academic freedom broadly and not limited it to academics. However, even on campus, academic freedom, just like freedom of speech, has its limits.  It is not true that I can teach creationism in an evolution class, or rail about Trump in a class about British history.  Academic freedom allows you to stay within the parameters of accepted knowledge and discourse within a field and, if you’re broaching new and heterodox ideas, they must be relevant to the class topic. If you violate this repeatedly, you’re likely to lose your academic job, and can have tenure revoked.

Similarly, academics are free to research anything they want, but that is no guarantee that their research will meet the standards of their field. If I was hired as a geneticist but spend my time studying the behavior of crickets, and not doing a good job of it, then yes, I could be disciplined or let go. You are free to do what you want within the parameters of your job, but that doesn’t guarantee career success.

(I won’t go into the the issue here of whether there is free speech in the classroom, though there clearly isn’t: again, professors can say what they want in class, but will be deep-sixed if it’s not relevant to the subject being taught. And classes also have is compelled speech: students are compelled to answer questions verbally or on exams, and are not free to give any answer they want.)

The separation of free speech and academic freedom is not a clean one. For example, a professor might say something in a didactic capacity that some students might consider harassment, like the professor at Hamline College who got into trouble for showing a picture of Muahmmad as a person, which offended some students. (The prof, who left, was ultimately vindicated.) However, there is a difference between freedom of speech adjudicated by the government, and freedom of thought, research, and teaching that is regulated by a professor’s field of work or department.

While freedom of speech assures professors at public universities of the right to promulgate their ideas, it is academic freedom, not freedom of speech, that allows them the latitude to study what they want and teach not only the gist of a subject, but promote a students’ ability to think.  It is academic freedom—the freedom of inquiry—that has:

  • Made the American university system a huge draw for students and researchers throughout the world (the US has 80% of the world’s top 50 universities).
  •  Led to 71% of all Nobel Prizes awarded having gone to Americans (29% of immigrants to America).  55% of the total are in science.
  • Prompted many revolutionary discoveries, including polio and other vaccines, gene editing technology, MRI, lasers, and GPS. (note that academic freedom obtains in many other countries, where it’s also promoted discoveries, including the structure of DNA and, in part CRISPR editing).
  • Led to the preeminence of American industry in creating scientific innovations, including microchip technology, vaccines for mumps, rubella, chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis, hepatitis B, and hepatitis A, and various drugs.

While industry doesn’t have “academic freedom” in the sense that universities do, remember that most of the researchers in industry who create these innovations were trained in universities and absorbed their research ethos. But of course companies don’t have freedom of speech in the way that universities do; for example, they have the right to keep the technique behind their discoveries confidential for a time without publishing all the details.

You’ll notice that I have stayed away from humanities fields like literature, art, music, philosophy and law.  Why? Because, in my view, while these fields may produce interpretations or analyses of things like novels and paintings, they do not yield empirical truths. Literature, music, and painting, for example, are not “ways of knowing” but “ways of feeling or thinking”. (I discuss this in Chapter 4 of Faith Versus Fact).

This of course does not mean that such fields are without worth or merit; every reader here knows of my admiration for much of the humanities, particularly literature, art, and philosophy. It is simply that it’s not clear what we mean in such fields by the “pursuit of truth”.  What, for example is the “truth” in a Jackson Pollack painting or in Joyce’s Ulysses?  What is the (empirical) truth in John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice? The latter gives us a provocative way to look at and construct morality, but of course there are a gazillion other suggestions about how to do that. Which one is the “true” path to morality?

Granted, fields like sociology and economics do traffic in truth, but truth that can be ascertained only by using the scientific method construed broadly, which I see as confluent with academic freedom.  It is the toolkit of science, which developed under academic freedom, that allows us to reach real truths, and that toolkit includes implements like falsifiability, quantitative methods, pervasive doubt and criticality (a feature of academic freedom itself), replication and quality control, parsimony, collectivity, double-blind testing, and peer review. These are laid out in Chapter 2 of Faith Versus Fact.  And in that book I also define “science construed broadly” as any endeavor that uses some of these tools to ascertain what’s true. So, for example, plumbers, car mechanics, and others who solve empirical problems using a version of the scientific method can be considered practicing “science construed broadly”. Steve Gould realized this in his essay Genesis vs. Geology, recounting his testimony in the creationism trial of McLean v. Arkansas:

As I prepared to leave Little Rock last December, I went to my hotel room to gather my belongings and found a man sitting backward on my commode, pulling it apart with a plumber’s wrench. He explained to me that a leak in the room below had caused part of the ceiling to collapse and he was seeking the source of the water. My commode, located just above, was the obvious candidate, but his hypothesis had failed, for my equipment was working perfectly. The plumber then proceeded to give me a fascinating disquisition on how a professional traces the pathways of water through hotel pipes and walls. The account was perfectly logical and mechanistic: it can come only from here, here, or there, flow this way or that way, and end up there, there, or here. I then asked him what he thought of the trial across the street, and he confessed his staunch creationism, including his firm belief in the miracle of Noah’s flood.As a professional, this man never doubted that water has a physical source and a mechanically constrained path of motion — and that he could use the principles of his trade to identify causes. It would be a poor (and unemployed) plumber indeed who suspected that the laws of engineering had been suspended whenever a puddle and cracked plaster bewildered him. Why should we approach the physical history of our earth any differently?

I see I’ve digressed a bit, so let me summarize. What is this sweating professor trying to say? (And remember, this is simply a first draft of some nascent ideas.) My claim is that freedom of speech does not by itself lead to truth via the much-vaunted “clash of ideas”.  That clash is necessary to find the truth, but not sufficient. Atop it one must place academic freedom: the freedom of scholars to teach, think, and research what they want.

I also claim that much of the humanities, whatever they claims, is not capable of finding truth, since it doesn’t turn on empirical facts but on critical analyses, competing theories, and competing interpretations. That doesn’t make humanities lesser than science—unless scholars in fields like art, music, and literature claim that they are practicing “another way of knowing.” Some disciplines, notably philosophy are good at of pointing out errors of thinking and guiding rational thinking, but again (in my view) do not and cannot find truths about the universe in which we dwell.

Finally, academic freedom is separate but still intertwined with freedom of speech, but they differ in important ways. The practice of academic freedom does not assume that all ideas are equal or all people are equal in merit: academia is hierarchical and meritocratic, while the First Amendment assumes that all views when expressed are equal and nobody gets an extra say because of their merit. Freedom of speech promotes the emergence of competing truths, while academic freedom emphasizes the ascertainment of the “truest” of these competitors.

Does free speech create a “marketplace of ideas” that leads to emergence of the truth?

May 20, 2025 • 9:45 am

I’m participating in the Heterodox Academy meeting in NYC on June 23-25, and its theme is “Truth, Power, and Responsibility.” The program for the entire meeting is here.

I’m on a rather daunting plenary panel on the 25th (below).  The description:

The Duties and Responsibilities of Scholars | Wednesday, June 25 at 12:30-1:50pm
What does it mean to be a scholar today—and who gets to decide? In an era marked by rising polarization, increasing public scrutiny of higher education, and shifting institutional expectations, the role of the scholar is more contested than ever. This plenary session brings together leading thinkers from across the academic spectrum to examine whether there are universal norms of scholarship that transcend disciplines, and what obligations scholars have not just to their fields, but to academia at large. This panel, featuring Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago), Jennifer Frey (University of Tulsa), Louis Menand (Harvard University), and John McWhorter (Columbia University), and moderated by Colleen Eren (William Paterson University), will explore where today’s academics derive their sense of duty, how those understandings are evolving, and what responsibilities come with the title of professor.

I suppose I could just let the bigwigs do all the talking, but I do want to make a contribution.  To do that, I’ve been reading quite a bit about academic freedom and free speech. I’ve discovered that they are two separate things, and that, if achieving truth is one’s aim, academic freedom is at least as important as free speech. In These are nascent ideas, so feel free to comment on them below.

First, let’s look briefly at free speech, which most scholars define this way:

Freedom of speech (according to America’s First Amendment): the prohibition of the government to suppress speech in public square. (There are of course exceptions, like harassment, false advertising, defamation, or creating imminent and predictable violence.)

There are three parts of the courts’ interpretation of First Amendment free speech:

a. There can be no content discrimination [A content-based law discriminates against speech based on the substance of what is communicated].

b. There are no true or false opinions for the purpose of the First Amendment. That is, everybody is entitled to their own opinion in all matters, both political and epistemic. This means that the ideas are given equal political consideration, but this doesn’t mean that all opinions are equally valid.

c.  The state cannot compel you to speak. (This is outlined in Robert Posts’s engaging speech).

There are two reasons for a rational democracy to adopt freedom of speech.  First, because a democracy is really government based on public opinion, as it’s ultimately based on votes. And, as we have learned, voters can sometimes have false or even harmful ideas. Second—and this is the philosophical underpinning of all freedom of speech laws—the freedom is supposed to create a “marketplace of ideas”, whose clash through public discussion and expression is supposed to be an essential route to finding TRUTH.  But does it? My view is no: the truth is ultimately determined through academic freedom, which I construe broadly to encompass quasi-scientific investigation using evidence, but investigation not necessarily done by academics.  I’ll discuss this in part 2 of the post, which I may or may not put up today.

The “marketplace of ideas” trope is based largely on the pronouncements of two men: John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes. I’ll give some of their quotes below about the value of the marketplace of ideas:

John Stuart Mill from on “On Liberty”

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

. . . . There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

The beliefs  which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

I have long touted Mill’s tract as of supreme importance in justifying freedom of speech in a democracy. And I still think that, but I no longer agree that the clash of ideas among the public promotes or guarantees emergence of the truth. Something more is needed, and that something, as we’ll see, is evidence.  Note that evidence is not mentioned by Mill.

From Oliver Wendell Holmes as quoted in the Annenberg Classroom:

In his dissent from the majority opinion in Abrams v. United States (upholding the Espionage Act convictions of a group of antiwar activists), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coins his famous “marketplace of ideas” phrase to explain the value of freedom of speech.

The full quote:

“[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

And from an article in Wikipedia: [In] the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that “if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.’

Note that he doesn’t mention freedom of speech, but freedom of thought. Freedom of thought is not protected under the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But does the clash of ideas in the public square produce truth (defined roughly as “something that conforms to fact or reality”) or knowledge (defined as “justified true belief”)? Again, the clash of ideas is necessary in a democracy so that the public can consider all sides of an issue before making decisions on who runs the government. We can argue later about whether certain non-elected parts of the government, like the Supreme Court, operate according to the First Amendment. They certainly don’t, as there is compelled speech—lawyers forced to answer questions—and not all ideas are considered equal.

Well, surely the clash of ideas is necessary to produce truth, but it’s not sufficient.  Let’s take some examples.

One that immediately comes to mind is the clash between creationism and evolution. Everyone is entitled, via free speech, to espouse publicly one or another view in the public square (but not in the classroom).  This is the vaunted clash of ideas.  But did this clash produce truth per se? No, what eventually allowed evolution to overcome creationism is evidence,  and that evidence doesn’t come from opinions, but from epistemic considerations.  What empirical evidence do we have on the side of evolution (ahem, Why Evolution is True), and what evidence on the side of a supernatural hand in creationism? The evidence comes from scholars (or nonscholars employing scientific methods) gathering evidence under the principle of academic freedom: studying, thinking, and publishing what they want, using norms of scholarship and without outside interference.  The finding of “truth” depends not only on a clash of ideas, but on the adducing of evidence by the opposing sides, along with the presumption that the public is rational and thoughtful enough to evaluate that evidence. (It apparently isn’t as judging by the most recent Gallup poll, which shows that 71% of Americans think that God had some had in evolution.)

Second, consider whether everyone is entitled to free government-provided health care, as in the UK and many other countries. Here we have an ongoing clash of ideas, which so far has resulted in an answer of “no” in America, though that could change.  Which “truth” has resulted from this clash? Does the UK have the truth, or the US? The “truth” is that perhaps one of these is better for society than the other, but the clash of ideas itself won’t settle the issue, and even so there would be unresolvable disagreement about what “better” means. What we need is what we don’t have: a comparative experiment (or data) showing the effects of each choice in each society, AND a public that has a widely shared idea of what a “better society” means.

The second question in fact involves not just facts but values: what kind of society do we want?  And while those values might be informed by a clash of ideas, they are based largely on unchangeable personal preferences. Often the clash of ideas rests heavily on morality, and, as I believe, there is no absolute morality and no “moral truth” (let’s put Biblical morality to the side here, since it’s not even clear that there is such a thing). Rather, morality is based on personal preferences, and in many cases (viz., the trolley problem), there is no truth: one simply adheres to one preference over another.

Here’s a third example: should society allow abortion? If some people have views on abortion that hinge on empirical facts, like whether a fetus has a heartbeat, can feel pain, or be viable if removed from the mother, then yes, those views can be informed by empirical investigation, also called “science”.

But there are many who favor an absolute prohibition of abortion because they consider it murder, murder of a potentially viable human being.  Such people feel they are right, but morally right. Other people, like me, favor almost unrestricted abortion up to birth, simply because I believe that a society in which women have that choice is a better society than one in which abortion is forbidden or given time limits.  But is the “truth” here? There is no truth: there is only people deciding what is morally permissible.  Yes, we have a clash of ideas, and yes, it’s resolved in various ways in various states, but the resolution is a political one: a consensus of opinion and not a determination of “truth.”  Again, I don’t see how that clash itself leads to the “truth”. It can lead to a political decision, but since this is largely an issue of preference, there is no truth to be had, no “conforming to what is reality.”

I maintain that most of the clashes of ideas we see in society deal with political or moral issues, hinging on preferences that cannot be adjudicated by argument alone. Some can be adjudicated by empirical investigation, but that is a minority.

In the end, while I believe that a clash of ideas is essential in a democracy simply to have a working democracy, the clash alone does not guarantee homing in on truths about the universe, and in many cases it can’t.  In the cases where it can, the clash involves differing opinions about empirical issues. And it is the resolution of those issues by empirical data that will guide us toward the truth. Absent empirical evidence, which can result only from academic freedom (construed widely as the freedom to think, teach, and research), a mere clash of ideas cannot guide us to the truth.