College Campuses, Academic Freedom, and the Searing , Virile, Intense, Battles Facing Higher Education!
Debates about events that occur on college campuses have frequently been seen as tools for partisan politics. More recently, they have been employed as useful weapons for attacking the gradual democratization that has occurred in higher education since the 1950s. Those of us who are academics and see education as crucial and not something that can be leveraged for political advantage should be alarmed at the specter of partisan attacks as well as the garish and outlandish headlines that adversely affect many people trying to make sense of and understand their lives.
Academic freedom, a term the American Association of University Professors developed in the mid-20th century, was designed to provide freedom of and protection for the pursuit of knowledge by faculty members, whose primary purpose is to educate, acquire knowledge, and conduct research inside and outside the halls of academia. Indeed, such a notion correlates with the Constitution’s protection of free speech as well as affirms the necessity of academic freedom to the right to education and the institutional independence of higher education institutions.
Nonetheless, across the nation, attacks on free speech have steadily increased. Over the past few years, right-wing groups opposed to…
