Nearly 100 Harvard Professors Take A Stand For Free Speech At The Elite School

Harvard Professors Launch Council of Academic Freedom to Promote Free Speech

Dozens of Harvard University professors have come together to support freedom of expression at the prestigious institution. As dissenting views become increasingly ostracized in academia, more than 90 professors launched the Council of Academic Freedom at Harvard earlier this month. Their aim is to “promote free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse on campus,” according to a recent press release.

A Diverse Group of Professors

The professors who launched the Council of Academic Freedom come from all sorts of academic disciplines, and include self-described civil libertarian law professor Alan Dershowitz and conservative-leaning government professor Harvey Mansfield. Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who led the Treasury Department under the Clinton administration, and economic policy professor Jason Furman, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama administration, are also part of the initiative. Members of the Council of Academic Freedom can be found here.

Why Free Speech Matters

Steven Pinker, a psychology professor and co-president of the Council of Academic Freedom, wrote an opinion piece in The Boston Globe with psychobiology professor Bertha Madras contending that “repression of academic freedom is systemic and must be actively resisted.” They argue that free expression is essential for a truth-seeking institution like Harvard, as it allows for the exchange of ideas and the process of conjecture and refutation. Without free speech, progress and learning become impossible.

Threats to Free Speech

Free expression at American universities has been threatened in recent years as faculties become increasingly Left-of-center. Conservatives report pressure to self-censor and experience overt instances of discrimination. Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was verbally accosted by protesters and a diversity administrator at Stanford University as he attempted to deliver a speech to law students, while a collegiate swim champion was more recently assaulted by student activists at San Francisco State University after she delivered a speech about radical gender theory and women’s sports.

Harvard has not been immune to the censorship of voices that threaten orthodoxy at the institution. Administrators removed Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) two years ago from her role on the senior advisory board of the Harvard Institute of Politics for making claims about voter fraud deemed to be incorrect. Students likewise circulated a petition that sought to revoke the Harvard degrees earned by lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) after the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol Building, asserting that the officials had “worked hard to spread the disinformation and mistrust” which led to the incident.

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