Academic Free Speech

Group photo of professors in front of an AAUP banne

An Unsettling Approach to Academic Freedom

The American Association of University Professors once defended heterodox thinkers. It now supports mandatory DEI statements and calls rival organisations right-wing stooges.

Andy Lamey

10 Mar 2025 · 28 min read

The Christopher Wren Building at the College of William & Mary is an old building, at the end of an avenue of trees. .

Universities Are Worth Saving

Those seeking to address the crisis on America’s campuses should resist the tendency toward nihilism—the temptation to conclude that we need to just (metaphorically) burn it all down.

Jonathan Rauch

18 Feb 2025 · 14 min read

Identity and Conflicts of Interest

It is always the lecturer’s responsibility to ensure that students know that they can speak freely.

Holly Lawford-Smith

18 Dec 2024 · 10 min read

Podcast #257: How Universities Should Regulate Contentious Speech

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with prolific Harvard University legal scholar Cass Sunstein about his new book, Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide.

Quillette

2 Nov 2024 · 10 min read

Looking Back on a Decade of Cancel Culture

A new book traces the rising threat to free speech on American campuses—and explains how students, teachers, administrators, and parents can become part of the solution.

Greg Lukianoff / Rikki Schlott

23 Jan 2024 · 10 min read

The Heckler’s Veto and the Right to Free Association

It's not just a matter of weighing up one group’s free speech against another group’s counter-speech. It’s also about one group’s freedom of association being impeded.

Holly Lawford-Smith

27 Nov 2023 · 8 min read

Podcast #226: Eric Kaufmann’s New ‘Centre for Heterodox Social Science’

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with political scientist Eric Kaufmann about cancel culture, switching universities, and why academics need to have honest conversations about the down side of immigration.

Quillette / Eric Kaufmann

20 Oct 2023 · 14 min read

The Cancellation of Bertrand Russell

Eight decades later, the issues raised by the Russell case—the rights to free speech and academic freedom—have still not been settled.

James Huffman

15 Sep 2023 · 9 min read

In Praise of Gender Crits

“Gender-critical” is a jargonny way of describing the ordinary views held by the vast majority of the planet’s population.

The Quillette Editorial Board

16 Jun 2023 · 9 min read

Campus Speech and Compromised Safety

As universities try desperately to serve two masters (knowledge production; diversity and inclusion), they will increasingly end up sanctioning speech that should be protected.

Holly Lawford-Smith

31 May 2023 · 9 min read

Free Speech and Due Process at Princeton: The Case of Joshua Katz

The treatment of a dissident professor raises serious questions about the university’s actions

Robert P. George

10 Jun 2022 · 10 min read

When Disagreement Becomes Trauma

How does one deal with those who claim that debate itself represents an agony beyond human endurance?

Jonathan Kay

8 May 2022 · 8 min read

Podcast #165: Peter Boghossian on Why He Quit Portland State University

“Grievance Studies” hoaxster and philosophy professor Peter Boghossian tells Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay why he could no longer continue waging his struggle for intellectual pluralism without first shaking off the ideological constraints of campus life.

Quillette / James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian

13 Sep 2021 · 1 min read

How to Fight the Enemies of Academic Freedom

Even though large tracts of our cultural landscape and many old and famous American institutions have fallen or may fall into the grip of this hostile ideology and all the odious apparatus of cancel culture rule, we shall not flag or fail.

Sergiu Klainerman

10 Aug 2020 · 6 min read

I've Been Fired. If You Value Academic Freedom, That Should Worry You

I did not enjoy the protection of tenure (I was, however, tenure-track), but we should not rely upon tenure to uphold free inquiry.

Bo Winegard

6 Mar 2020 · 7 min read