Go back a few decades, and colleges didn’t have a need for free expression statements. But now that the “progressives” have thoroughly politicized most of them, free speech is controversial. Faculty members and school leaders who want to create a free-speech statement will find it pretty challenging.
That’s what Professor Martha McCaughey tells us in today’s Martin Center article. She writes about her experience at the University of Wyoming:
Our statement of principles considered both free expression and academic freedom. This is especially important given that the former is sometimes inappropriately pitted against the latter — as when an area of scholarly study is banned under the guise of protecting free expression or when a student wrongly expects his or her personal opinion to substitute for knowledge of a discipline. Further, while free expression protects students and employees from censorship when they are expressing themselves as ordinary citizens, academic freedom and its attendant responsibilities govern conduct in college classrooms, scholarship, and academic publications.
Even at a “red state” university, creating the statement was difficult. Some people fretted about “hate speech,” for example.
Read the whole thing.