Showing results for "Free Speech" in Education

Can free speech coexist with an inclusive campus environment? Hardly a week goes by without another controversy over free speech on college campuses. On one side, there are increased demands to censor hateful, disrespectful, and bullying expression and to ensure an inclusive and nondiscriminatory learning environment. On the other side are traditional free speech advocates who charge that recent demands for censorship coddle students and threaten free inquiry.

It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy that have no intellectual legitimacy. They argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.

Free speech is indispensable on college campuses: allowing varied views and frank exchanges of opinion is a core component of the educational enterprise. But free speech does not mean a free-for-all. The First Amendment prohibits "abridging the freedom of speech," yet laws against perjury or bribery, for example, are still constitutional. In the same way, valuing freedom of speech does not stop a university from regulating speech when doing so is necessary for its educational mission. So where is the dividing line? How can we distinguish reasonable restrictions from impermissible infringement? 

'Francis is doing for teaching what This is Going to Hurt did for medicine. Brutal, honest and laugh-out-loud funny.' Jimmy Carr 'A great subject covered by a guy unafraid to tell it like it is' Geoff Norcott The class weren't laughing with me, they were laughing at me and there is no lonelier...

The landmark history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History “A riveting book.” —Frank Rich, New York Times In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the...