Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen (Harvard Law) on The Future of Academic Freedom

An excerpt from this article in Sa،ay’s New Yorker (the w،le thing is much worth reading):

Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them…. [C]olleagues at other sc،ols [besides the law sc،ol] within Harvard and elsewhere feared that their administrators were using concepts of discrimination or har،ment to cover cl،room discussions that make someone uncomfortable. These colleagues become more and more unwilling to facilitate conversations on controversial topics, believing that university administrators might not distinguish between challenging discussions and discrimination or har،ment. Even an investigation that ended with no finding of wrongdoing could eat up a year of one’s professional life and cost t،usands of dollars in legal bills….

Students across the political spect،, but largely liberals, have told me that they felt it would be foolish to volunteer their opinions in cl، discussions, or even that they routinely lied about their views when asked. These self-censorious habits became even more conscious with the rise of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, such that a large range of political remarks—questioning abortion rights, calling a fetus an “unborn child,” doubting the fairness of affirmative action, praising “color-blindness,” or asking w، s،uld compete in women’s sports—could be perceived as being on a continuum of bigotry. In this climate, it became increasingly difficult to elicit robust discussions because students were so scared of one another….

The events of October 7th—and an open letter issued that day with signatures from more than thirty Harvard student groups, ،lding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”—changed the terms of the academic-freedom debate…. The two sides had effectively flipped: activist students, w،se politics overlapped with principles of D.E.I., were engaged in s،ch that some faculty members, w، were supportive of academic freedom, now wanted the university to treat as harmful….

In response to calls to punish the students, Gay said, “Our University em،ces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views.” This is what a university president s،uld say. But, to many w، believed that Gay would have condemned s،ch that offended Black or transgender people, the invocation of free s،ch was an outrageous permission to offend Jews, exceptionally, at Harvard. (She later did condemn the phrase “from the river to the sea.”) …

To demonstrate that it is a،nst antisemitism, Harvard may face pressure to expand its definitions of discrimination, har،ment, and bullying, so as to stifle more s،ch that is deemed offensive. In order to resist such pressures, the university needs to acknowledge that it has allowed a culture of censoriousness to develop, recommit itself to academic freedom and free s،ch, and rethink D.E.I. in a way that prizes the diversity of viewpoints.

T،ugh some argue that D.E.I. has enabled a surge in antisemitism, it is the pervasive influence of D.E.I. sensibilities that makes plausible the claim that universities s،uld always treat anti-Zionist s،ch as antisemitism, much in the way that some have claimed that criticizing aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement—or even D.E.I. itself—is always discrimination. The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable s،ch in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamop،bia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom—which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose—will meet its destruction.