Academic Freedom and Free Speech
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20143008 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sven Ove Hansson (0000-0003-0071-3919, Division of Philosophy KTH Stockholm Sweden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 91 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.70055 |
| OpenAlex | W4415674292 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Academic freedom and free speech at universities are often confused, and there is a need to clarify how they relate to each other. We will focus on their implications in democratic countries (contrary to undemocratic countries, in which they are both obstructed). This is best done by treating them as general principles, rather than exploring how they have been specified in some country’s constitution or other legal acts. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Free speech protects against government interference based on the contents of the speech. The fact that a statement is severely wrong is not a reason to disallow its expression. For instance, although it is well known that π is an irrational number and that the Earth is approximately spherical, no one is (or should be) forbidden to say that π is exactly 22/7 or that the Earth is flat. However, that the principle of free speech allows the utterance of a message does not mean that someone wishing to spread that message has a right to do so by whatever media they choose. Newspapers and other media are free to choose whom they invite to write or to be interviewed. Private spaces are usually not open for the exercise of free speech, and the same applies to most public buildings, such as courts of law, offices of public agencies, regiments, public hospitals, publicly owned railway stations and airports. Only some public spaces, such as streets, squares and parks, are in general open for all public speeches and manifestations that are protected by the principle of free speech. Even in countries where the right to free speech is protected by the legal system, there are large inequalities in terms of access to platforms where that right can be exercised. As noted by John Stuart Mill and many others, public discussions are obstructed in a system where ‘newspapers are a mere investment of capital for the sake of mercantile profit’ (Mill 1836/1977, 135). Unfortunately, such injustices are seldom at the centre of current discussions on free speech. By academic freedom I understand the right to search for the truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right also implies a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. (Einstein 1954/1968, 551) As Einstein also emphasised, academic freedom comes with responsibilities, not least responsibilities to aim at advancing knowledge and to avoid bias and other sources of error (Welshon 2020, 53–54). Academics have the same rights to free speech as all members of the public, but they have greater moral responsibilities than members of the general public to provide accurate information (Dawson and Herington 2014; Bliss and Gatley 2025, 243–244). For instance, for a non-academic to claim that the Vikings wore horned helmets may be a minor, excusable mistake. If a historian made the same mistake, it would be serious enough for colleagues to ask for a correction. Academic freedom is not just freedom for individual members of the academia. It is also freedom for universities and other academic institutions to run their own business. It has long been recognised that this collective freedom comes with important collegial responsibilities (Downey 2005). Universities have collegial decision-making processes to ensure that research and teaching have sufficiently high quality, that the requirements of research ethics are upheld and that the work environment of students and employees is constructive, encouraging and free from all forms of intimidation and discrimination (Bliss and Gatley 2025, 244–246). This arrangement is based on the reasonable assumption that academic self-governance is the best way to uphold scientific and scholarly quality. Decisions made to protect a good academic work environment can, of course, sometimes put limits to the behaviour of individual academics. However, in particular when academic contents are concerned, it is essential that those limits be set collegially by the universities themselves, rather than by outside authorities (Leiter 2018, 33). As we have already noted, the principle of free speech does not imply or require that anyone wanting to express an opinion has access to whatever forum they wish. In particular, universities have no obligation to open up academic forums for purposes that are in conflict with those of academic research and education (McKinnon 2007, 21–22). For instance, there is no need for academic research or education to provide a platform for the promotion of seriously flawed historical claims such as holocaust denial. Universities have long offered an arena in which students and visitors engage with and advocate for ideas. Those debates are often boisterous and freewheeling. They reflect the chaos of American democracy rather than the decorum of the seminar room. What holds those two worlds together is a common commitment to taking ideas seriously, to exploring the unconventional and the unexpected, to examining critically what we might otherwise take for granted, and to holding accepted truths up for challenge and reconsideration. (Whittington 2018, 7) We should think of campuses as having two different zones of free expression: a professional zone, which protects the expression of ideas but imposes an obligation of responsible discourse and responsible conduct in formal educational and scholarly settings; and a larger free speech zone which exists outside scholarly and administrative settings and where the only restrictions are those of society at large. Members of the campus community may say things in the free speech zones that they would not be allowed to say in the core educational and research environment. (Chemerinsky and Gillman 2018, 77) It should be taken into account that there is currently no lack of forums for the promotion of false claims. Disinformation about climate science, childhood vaccinations and many other topics reaches enormous audiences through social media and various high-profile platforms, including the Oval Office. Proponents of some such claims are profusely funded from various well-moneyed sources. For instance, ‘think-tanks’ and lobbyists denying climate science have economic resources that educators explaining the findings of climate science can only dream of. Therefore, the question is not whether students should have access to speech promoting these false claims. Instead, the question is whether such messages should reach them through university platforms, in addition to the much larger non-academic megaphones from which they are propagated. Promotors of thoroughly falsified claims are eager to present their ideas at universities, since doing so can provide them with a legitimacy they cannot easily obtain in any other way. Many of them are also adept at masquerading as academic researchers. For instance, the tracts of holocaust deniers often look like research articles by historians, but a study of their sources will reveal that this is just a façade hiding misinterpretations and the neglect of incontrovertible evidence. Similarly, articles claiming that members of some ‘race’ are born less intelligent than other humans are often full of statistical tests and other scientific paraphernalia, but a closer examination will uncover methodological failings that invalidate the conclusions. However, it is not uncommon for academics to naïvely believe that the authors of such writings are serious scientists, willing to take criticism and to adjust their claims in the light of incontrovertible evidence. (If they were so, then they would long ago have given up their provenly false claims.) For instance, one philosopher declared a text claiming that Black persons are intellectually inferior to be ‘not racial vilification, for it is aimed at our intellect, presenting complex evidence and making arguments based on that evidence’. Consequently, he argued that its author should be invited to speak at universities, where it should be assumed that ‘he would acknowledge the possibility of new evidence emerging that would refute his views’. Not doing so was allegedly a matter of ‘silencing’ him. For similar reasons, according to the same philosopher, it was also appropriate to invite one of the most prominent holocaust denialists to speak at universities (Singer 2018, 25–28). However, students are not well served by having such deceivers presented to them as serious scholars. Instead, students need to be taught how to discover and reveal disinformation masquerading as science. We should never lose sight of the purpose of universities, which is, as Einstein said, to search for the truth and to publish and teach what we hold to be true. The author declares no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study
Academic freedom · Constitution · Democracy · First amendment · Free speech · Freedom of the press · Irrational number · Newspaper · Utterance · Academic Freedom and Politics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Law, Rights, and Freedoms
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |