New faculty-led organization at Harvard will defend academic freedom - The Boston Globe

The new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard is devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse. Leaders are diverse in politics, demographics, disciplines, and opinions, but united in their concern for academic freedom.

Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country. No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted, and it is vindicated by some alarming numbers. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression , between 2014 and 2022 there were

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