How to promote academic freedom in America

WHEN SEEKING a job to teach in the University of California system, academic excellence is not enough. Applicants must also submit a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statement, explaining how they will advance those goals. That sounds fair enough, except that a promise to treat everyone equally would constitute a fail. Meanwhile in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature are trying to ban the teaching of critical race theory, an approach to studying racism with which they disagree. While this has been going on, a row has broken out (also in Florida) over a new pre-college course in African-American studies. These three developments have one thing in common: they are attempts to win arguments by controlling the institutions where those arguments take place.

Threats to academic freedom in America can come from many directions. Students sometimes object to being exposed to ideas they deem troubling. Some even try to get faculty members fired for allowing such ideas to be voiced. Donors occasionally threaten to withdraw funding, which has a chilling effect on what can be taught. Speakers can be banned. Academics may self-censor, or succumb to groupthink. Occasionally American society demands restrictions on academic freedom, as when professors in the 1950s were asked to take loyalty tests to prove they were not communist sympathisers.