Academic Free Speech

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 · 7 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

20 Oct 2023 · 1 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 · 8 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 · 7 min read

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

Quillette / James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian

13 Sep 2021 ·

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

Demoted and Placed on Probation

One young man said to me, “How did you get tenure?” When I said that I didn’t have tenure he said, “Good! Because you’re not going to get it.”

Stuart Reges

11 Jan 2020 · 13 min read

The Hysterical Campus

When speakers need police escort on and off college campuses, an alarm bell should be going off that something has gone seriously awry.

Heather Mac Donald

19 Sep 2018 · 11 min read

Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

If a formally refereed and published paper can later be erased from the scientific record and replaced by a completely different article, without any discussion with the author or any announcement in the journal, what will this mean for the future of electronic journals?

Theodore P. Hill

7 Sep 2018 · 13 min read

As a Former Dean of Harvard Medical School, I Question Brown’s Failure to Defend Lisa Littman

Pursuing unorthodox scholarship can lead to frustration and failure, to exciting breakthroughs, or anything in between.

Jeffrey S. Flier

31 Aug 2018 · 8 min read