Over the last year, professors from across the ideological divide have become targets for their research and speech. Students, administrators, colleagues, and the public have all repeatedly called for the firing or censorship of research and professors they find "problematic."
While the study and research done by professors should be insulated against popular opinion, more and more college administrators are acting against their institutions' instructors.
How should professors fight back? How do they continue to perform the essential work of a university—to seek truth—and keep their jobs? How do we ensure the tradition of academic freedom lives on under growing authoritarianism from within colleges and universities?
On Thursday, June 17th, at 2 pm ET the National Association of Scholars hosted a webinar event with leaders in the fight for academic freedom from the United States, Canada, and Britain.
This event featured Bruce Gilley, professor of political science at Portland State University; Mark Mercer, president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (Canada); and Toby Young, founder and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union (UK). Moderators included Bruce Oliver Newsome, professor of political science at the University of San Diego, and David Randall, director of research at the National Association of Scholars.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.
