As a graduate student in an engineering schoold at Simon Fraser University, I had several Teacher Assistant jobs.  I remember marking student assignments in a December in the 1990's and adding a small phrase: ''Happy Christmass''.  I was later told by the professor that I should'nt do that because not everybody is christians.  I was totally aware of this fact but until that time I was just interpreting that gesture not like a religious one. It is then that I realized the secularizing moral pressure.  The pressure did not come the foreigh students or the muslim but from a certain liberal elite pretending it is offensive for these peoples.  I never felt so but felt that it was offensive for that liberal elite.

Hi Prof Barry, I do agree with you that freedom of expression, speech and press are among the basic human rights in any democracy!

Here in India, Under Indian law, the freedom of speech and of the press do not confer an absolute right to express one's thoughts freely.Clause (2) of Article 19 of the Indian constitution enables the legislature to impose certain restrictions on free speech under following heads:

I. security of the State,

II. friendly relations with foreign States,

III. public order,

IV. decency and morality,

V. contempt of court,

VI. defamation,

VII. incitement to an offence, and

VIII. sovereignty and integrity of India.

The article in The Times on 18/01.2016 quoted by you, the flip side of the same also has to be explored according to the law of land(UK) before we form an opinion.

regards

Rathish

Dear Barry,

I have no knowledge of the situation in the UK universities, however the right of free speech is often suppressed by policies/rules adopted in US universities, even though such policies/rules are blatantly in violation of our constitution (First Amendment).

Bob

I teach to my students in reverential tones the wonders of the 1st amendment.   

With of course the requisite dose of skepticism.

Barry

As a graduate student in an engineering schoold at Simon Fraser University, I had several Teacher Assistant jobs.  I remember marking student assignments in a December in the 1990's and adding a small phrase: ''Happy Christmass''.  I was later told by the professor that I should'nt do that because not everybody is christians.  I was totally aware of this fact but until that time I was just interpreting that gesture not like a religious one. It is then that I realized the secularizing moral pressure.  The pressure did not come the foreigh students or the muslim but from a certain liberal elite pretending it is offensive for these peoples.  I never felt so but felt that it was offensive for that liberal elite.

Barry: I share your concern for freedom of expression. As for boycotting institutions, I would prefer to boycott individual administrators, since it would be unfair to associate professors with the misguided policies of a few people who choose to abuse their positions of authority in this way.

International PEN, with which I was affiliated for several years, has done some essential work along these lines:

https://pen.org/pen-world

A group of Nobel Prize winners have leapt to the defence of under-fire scientist Sir Tim Hunt, insisting that academics' must retain their right to absolute freedom of expression. 

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132413/Eight-Nobel-prize-winners-attack-lynch-mob-forced-sexism-row-professor-Sir-Tim-Hunt-job.html

Yes, and the Times is 20 years too late asking the question. The corporate university cannot tolerate creativity or free expression, so it doesn't. Today's students don't care, their parents who pay the bills don't care, and the generation of faculty members who might have cared at some point are rapidly retiring. 

And young tenured academics merely exist to persist in a near catatonic state of too much to process and not least justify against pseudoscientific indicators (just consider the abuse of bibliometrics etc). They are too locked into their hamster-wheels to challenge the bean-counters and politicians, who run universities as businesses first, and treat the very notion of the Center of Enlightenment with contempt.

Scholarship is barely even tolerated, in the priorities of fund-raising and student processing.The scientist seeking tenure, or at least security, best look elsewhere.

In all its myopia, the Thatcherite-Blairite economic model propels what stood for pedagogy and the Enlighenment into the new Dark Ages

Dear @Barry, why did you share this question so late? 

Of course, freedom of speech and expressions is assumed at Academia. Unfortunately, my experience is quite different. Politics influence Universities and sometimes I am aware of self-censorship! 

FREE SPEECH IS THREATENED ON CAMPUS is fine reading about.

http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/02/15/free-speech-is-threatened/

http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/upcoming-debates/item/1500-free-speech-is-threatened-on-campus

Dear Rathish, I find the 2nd point you listed "friendly relations with foreign States" quite horrifying. Yes, sometimes a state has to be "friendly" with an obnoxious state but does that mean you cannot criticise them?

The Orwell's '1984' predictions are coming true, the 'politically correct' is imposing a new language and a systematic cancellation of reality datum. The incredible thing (reality many times surpasses imagination) that this is not only confined to social and political issues but even natural science where already known failures are commented as 'breakthroughs' (e.g. AOPs, GWA studies, Brain Inititative, Artificial Intelligence, Single knock-out analyses...).

As for now the low social esteem of scientist here in Italy saves us from the attention of Big Brother...and still enjoy a relative freedom of thougth...but I cannot say how long it will last....

Are Universities Threatening Free Expression?

Think this is generalization and still  in many universities  there is a lot of freedom for expressin

Excellent question!

Happy Christmass! Freedom of expression is in the mind!

What is the difference between a written exchange and an oral exchange in the freedom of expression? So-called hidden versus non-hidden?

Look at how UCL treats its student journalists.  I teach students about freedom of expression and emphasise how importune journalists are to our free society (for all their excesses) 

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/nuj-accuses-ucl-disgraceful-after-threatening-student-journalist-expulsion

On the subject of Happy Christmas I have had as many Christmas cards from Muslim students and staff as from Christians.  There is no evidence whatsoever that Muslims are 'offended' by Christmas.  

In any case in free societies there is a right of offend and being offended is a price we pay for freedom.   

Is there a right to offend? Professor discusses concept of free speech

http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2012/10/578.asp

The issue is not just that instituions are repressing free speech.  Often it's the students seeking to prevent people that they don't agree with from speaking at all.  I think this illustrates two different issues - the increasing interference in academic research by university authorities, and the rising idea in student populations that it is more appropriate to censor those you disagree with than to engage and rationally refute.  I think the latter is a greater threat, as it demonstrates a fundamental failure to grasp the essence of rational debate.  And surely that must threaten to undermine more than just academic publications...

Dear Brandt,

I agree with you, but again this is a consquence of the education crisis: how many 'bad teachers' (or equivalently 'lack of real teachers') have generated this 'fear of diversity' among the students ? 

But you are totally right and I am concerned of a future world ruled by these students. In any case it is important not to generalize, my experience here in Italy is that the great part of the students are not of this kind. Moreover I live in Roma that has very ancient and powerful antibodies against fondamentalism , politically correctness and in general taking our ideas too seriously .. I hope it will be a valid fortress against unique thought....

Some people think that they are for the  freedom of expression but as soon as someone expressed something that sound awfull for them, they are ready to say that freedom of expression should not extend to that kind of expression.  Unconsciously they limit the  freedom of expression to what they agree with.  Even Stalin was for this kind of freedom of expression.  

Yes, dear Barry. This is what exactly the regime of "academic capitalism" - as coined by Roadhes and Slaughter, and Leslie - means. Important literature on the subject has being running since then - to-date.

I like the idea of boycott, especially thanks to the link to sabotage (an idea that originally comes from the "sabots", in French).

However, I find very difficult to boycott a university. Let's think about it. A company, say a food company is very easy to boycott... Europe has great examples about this. But a university? I must think further about it...

'No platforming' is censorship and indicates illiberal or weak and lazy thinking.  The use of this by student unions needs curtailing and those who believe in free expression should have no truck with any organisation that employs it.

Time will reveal! Just be patient?

Probably you are right dear Marcel, but the risk to grow up a fundamentalist generation is too high for not to try to contrast this trend just from now...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Turner and readers,

Good question. My own view of the matter is that the American universities, both public and private, are being politicized, and that this seems to be a matter of making them safe constituencies for our politicians. Basically, the way this seems to work is that administrators specially charged with these matters, under prodding from the state, use the students to control behavior of the faculty, thus diminishing the possibility for campus and classroom debate of controversial issues. The increased use of Title IX "protections" is certainly not unrelated to policies of the federal government.

I wonder if you are aware of the work on "Fire" which has been challenging much of this. There is a long series of related videos available on line, telling some of the stories.  Here is one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVGOp0IffOQ

The video, about 10 Min. long, is chiefly an interview with Professor Laura Kipnis, who was brought up on charges at her university related to "Title IX," because of an article she wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, sponsoring the idea that "Sexual paranoia" was striking on campus. 

My impression is that these more recent developments are not entirely new, and that "increasing sensitivity" has long been used as a technique of infighting within the universities. People have long been excluded for suspicion of "political incorrectness," and related practices are now being institutionalized and formalized. Still, there is also more explicit resistance of late.

H.G. Callaway

Dear all:

Usually I am troubled by teaching in a public university because of our relative poverty of resources and money. But when I see problems that are literally fabricated by "corporate universities", I jump with joy and yell "I am free!". Because we are a public institution, we have to abide by constitutional rules of freedom of speech and of all sorts of expression, and we have the opportunity to forego administrative law and go to court. We have a strong faculty and a strong senate, and a ferociously political student body. When in trouble, we march in front of our Capitol building and denounce before the Legislature of Puerto Rico whatever must be denounced. We have terrible —but somewhat elegant— group discussions, and when any professor is encroached upon or slightly discouraged to treat a subject in class, there is an almost immediate response from the faculty as a body and the claim goes right to the senate and, from there, to the press. We, of course, must be respectful to our students, and they must reciprocate that respect, but that does not mean that we are expressly barred from whatever a single student may find reproachable.

In my second year of teaching (20 years ago), a student told me that she would not sit through the exam on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey because she refused to read texts of an non-Christian religion. I had to hold a laugh. I just told her: "I understand, but this is a course requirement that is not under discussion, and individual preferences have nothing to undo with the accepted curriculum. You do not have to come, but there is no substitution for this subject". Well, she did not come and had a "F". She did the same thing with Greek Tragedy, and also got an "F". It was a pity because she was the most intelligent student in the group and I thought that she was just under someone else's influence. I did not inquire further. Since she had performed well in the history part of the class, she got a "C" as final grade. Next year she enrolled again in my course and, when she saw I was surprised to see her, told me : "I like the class very much. I guess I have to put up with your unchristian ideas, so you will have to put up with my Christian ideas". I answered, "I have things to discuss in my class and have not enough time for items that are not already assigned, but you can come to my office for a coffee and we can talk about your ideas". She started coming to my office, and I usually invited her to talk on one of our beautiful gardens. Eventually she just went to class like everyone else. And then she got an "A" for final grade. And she did read Plautus, Cicero, Lucretius, Catulus, Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. She loved Ovid. But, hey, who does not just looooooove Ovid?

There was another time, in the third semester of that component, that I had to teach Goethe's Faust, a work I find terribly boring. Since we could replace Faust with another worthy work with similar intent from the same literary period, I decided to teach Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. I found this work even more appropriate to the theme of that unit, and thought that my students would find it more engaging. When the Chairwoman of the Personel Committee saw my syllabus, she called me to her office and said, "What's wrong with Faust? And I said: "It is pompous, boring, distant. I can do the same thing with Frankenstein, which is now being taught in the best universities instead of Faust! I have the bibliography; here I also have the MLA Guide to teaching Frankenstein." "That is unacceptable!", she said. And I answered, "But the title of both works begins with an "F"!" Oh, she became really mad, but I was laughing so hard that she she just stopped and told me, "By tomorrow I want a written explanation on why teach Frankenstein in class, and we will visit your class next Tuesday, instead of next month." Of course, I wrote the explanation for the next day, it was accepted, and we had a splendid class. Everybody was thrilled to be reading Frankenstein,  the Personnel Committee was dully appeased, and the student thought I was the coolest teacher on the block, which is not quite true: I am a beast making and correcting exams. I know this sounds like a Michelle Pfeiffer feel-good movie with poor El Barrio kids, but this is the way it happened. Eventually I posted my explanation on my blog, and I must say that this is one of the top most-read teaching articles I've ever posted. Most readers are university teachers from Puerto Rico, Spain and Latin America. If you are intrigued, here is my brief explanation for teaching Frankenstein. There title in English would be something like Frankenstein: User's Manual for literature fans who teach would-be literature fans

https://bodegonconteclado.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/frankenstein-manual-de-uso-para-maestros-fiebrus-de-estudiantes-fiebrus/

In short, everything is possible, but possibility must be founded on good strategy... and a drop of humorous terrorism. Teaching cannot depend on a teacher's whim, but on a well though-out reason. After all, we owe it to our students. :-)

Sorry for the typos...

Best regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Callado,

Very interesting story on teaching and selection of texts.

I was especially struck by the following passage:

When in trouble, we march in front of our Capitol building and denounce before the Legislature of Puerto Rico whatever must be denounced. We have terrible —but somewhat elegant— group discussions, and when any professor is encroached upon or slightly discouraged to treat a subject in class, there is an almost immediate response from the faculty as a body and the claim goes right to the senate and, from there, to the press. We, of course, must be respectful to our students, and they must reciprocate that respect, but that does not mean that we are expressly barred from whatever a single student may find reproachable.

---End quotation

It seems that you have a good deal of faculty "solidarity," and that they are willing to enter into political protests. I recall your telling us that you were once "Minister of Culture" in PR. I wonder, though, if this constitutes practical advice in administratively dominated universities--heavily dependent on government funds and good will. It seems to me that part of the problem in American universities is that the faculty plays too small a role overall; and few are the faculty members skilled at public, political strategies. So I suspect that in degree as the universities become politicized, this favors certain sorts of faculty and disfavors others. In effect, if favors those more politicized themselves.

One might expect that in degree as the universities become intensively politicized that faculty positions will come to be passed down within families, or groups in any case, where past political experience is at a premium. Access to arcane insider political lore, then becomes the chief qualification for work in teaching, and the administration is free to go on pleasing their political masters? I cannot quite imagine that this would not have much the same chilling effect on open debate and discussion of controversial topics as we presently see in relation to the implementation of Title IX "protections."

I believe it is generally the case that any sitting political establishment will strongly tend to preserve existing injustices along with its own positions and power. It is not the political establishment which sees the problems and injustices, but instead the outsiders who are subject to them. The freedom of discussion and debate on campus is a fundamental feature of liberal education and cannot be made to depend on anyone's political good will. Moreover, we are talking about constitutionally protected freedoms here. The idea that administration would fail to protect them, except when pressured politically is a convincing image of institutional failure and political competitions for control run wild. The old fashioned American solution would be a treatment with tar and feathers --and then you run them out of town.  No incitement intended here, but establishment politicians have well earned the anti-establishment roasting they are presently getting.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Turner & readers,

Here's another of the FIRE videos I mentioned--well worth the short viewing time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS6IA93o79s

The 5 cases and situations described are pretty astounding. Equally amazing is how quickly the the perpetrators of campus oppression back down when confronted with some firm opposition.

H.G. Callaway

I think you misunderstood me, dear H. G!

What our faculty defends are  institutional rights to teach with full academic freedom, whether we are politically positioned on the left, the center or the right. Our students are politically ferocious in that they seek a better university, with the best faculty, the best studying facilities, and as cheap as we can make it operate. They have marched throughout the years for a free university where they would pay no tuition at all, but that will not be possible for obvious reasons. There is nothing arcane here, though there was a time —long time ago— when "families" and "clans" decided who would get a teaching position. I started late in life —I was 42 when I started teaching and obtained my tenure-track position almost immediately without "families", "clans", but on sheer merit, as it should be. It was about twenty years earlier —and under the pressure of accreditation agencies— that the university would no longer be governed by "families", and our institution became, vis à vis US universities, a good producer of excellent graduate students. That is getting better. For us, "politics" means institutional policies, not partisan politics. :-)

Besides, I saw the Fire videos and nothing like that has happened, that I know, in my university. My examples of freedom of speech are, or course, lame, compared to what Fire has had to challenge, but that was my point. At my university things are different, we do not have those horrible problems, and both the faculty and the student body are quite empowered to deal with the curtailment of our rights. Our public universities are not yet corrupted. We are very happy about that.

Warm regards, Lilliana

I recently noted on another thread that some universities are more prone to offer a position to a researcher whose previous work fits into the institution's doctrine or "5-year plan". I doubt you will find many psychologists who have published papers concerning the origins of organized religion as a contrived social buffering system for the lower class being offered a job at a religious-based college. This is a little talked about fact in the academic world. However, it does not surprise me that some universities are censoring faculty if they are not kowtowing to the university's credo.

I will not name university or researcher (you can look it up), but a professor who lead a team investigating the cause of the levee failure during Hurricane Katrina found that the Corps of Engineers levee was not properly engineered as mandated. Shortly after his report was published it was announce that his employment would be terminated at the end of the Spring Semester. The researcher sued for wrongful termination and won. During the trail, emails were submitted as evidence that showed that the Governor's Office and the university had conspired to quieten the researcher if his findings were bad for the Corps of Engineers. The university for which he worked had multiple contracts with the Corps of Engineers that were worth a lot of money.

How often does suppressing research happen? Likely quite a lot to some degree or another.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Collado,

Thank you for your further note. I think I did not misunderstand you, but instead, I was pointing to dissimilarities in the various cases. I am glad to know that your university is not corrupt. However, there are those which are corrupt. Moreover, there are deep connections between the corruption in the universities and the political divisiveness in the country at larger scales.

Just how extensive the related problems may be is an empirical question. But the aim of accomplishing political objectives by means of political and institutional pressure or intimidation, as contrasted with open debate, seems clear and all too pervasive. This undermines liberal education. If it is more conservative thinkers who are targeted at one point, then once the means of suppression are institutionalized, it will be any other opposition at the next occasion. Think of it as a matter of keeping anyone from rocking the (moving political and institutional) boat.  

H.G. Callaway

During the 1980's free opinions were freely emailed from anyone to all at the university that I was associated with. Then, it was discontinued, stopped by the new management. Now all you hear is the official news bulletin which resembles news from political parties.

There is no truth in some announcements (coming from a university? Yes!).

For example, a meeting was called by the president that was attended by 1-2 % of staff, that was described in the bulletin as "an overwhelming warm attendance by professors".

That president's contract was not renewed.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/17/britains-scientists-must-not-be-gagged

this article popped up on my social media feed earlier, highlights a lot of the issues raised here and shows a government agenda.

So long to you the inductive method, you shall be missed. 

Dear Fillipo, the experience of a vast amount of professors in private universities is repression, especially of the adjunct faculty. That is witnessed by the short documentaries made by "Fire" [ https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/ ], which interviews professors and students who have been harassed for voicing their views. There have been frequent cases of people fired from their jobs for asserting their academic freedom and their freedom of expression. There is even a terrible book about this subject, Allan Bloom's extremely controversial Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (1987). The same is happening in England and has been minutely covered lately by many articles in The Guardian, among other media. Free speech includes "wrong speech" as part of a debate. Usually "wrong speech" is just institutionally wrong, but not "legally wrong". Within a university, constitutional laws regarding free speech are applicable as on the rest of society. Universities are part of society and are not exempt from laws and regulations. The repression of speech cannot be tolerated, especially in a university setting where multiple views are supposed to be encouraged in the pursuit of teaching and learning. Universities are the laboratories of society: knowledge should be always welcome and, frequently, knowledge is the offspring of debate.

Best regards, Lilliana

Quite  a few years back, following his MacArthur Award, the evol biologist and philosopher Michael Ghiselin wrote a scathing scholarly criticism of the shocking state of decline of N American academia. 

Ghiselin MT. 1989. Intellectual compromise: the bottom line. New York: Paragon House

It's hard to find today (perhaps the kind of book university oligarchs would ban or even burn?!?), but a scanned pdf copy is on 3rd party sites catering for the devout academic  - e.g. Library Genesis

During the most recent Bush administrations there was talk about university researchers being sanctioned or fired for offering opinions and research conclusions contrary to "official White House policy". In fact, one report on climate change was edited after being submitted to the point that instead of refuting administration policy, it was at most neutral.

As for a "speech act", these must be used with extreme care and only in the most compelling of circumstances, such as during war to protect national or military secrets. While many have not thought long nor hard about it, here in the United States we have lost some of our "free speech" after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Once upon a time we could say anything in public in sincerity or jokingly. Unless it was something like calling in a bomb threat to a public school or building, our laws were clear that arrests resulted from actions, not words.  Now we can get arrested for "terrorizing" just by mentioning a word. Its a nice little loophole in free speech compliments of G. W. Bush.

In the sixties and seventies many academic voices were egaged into the political debate.  There are very little academic voices in the political debate today.  University are more like convents today.