It has been another brutal year for academic freedom. Colleges and universities have become entangled in political agendas; donors and trustees have used funding as a cudgel; and the Trump administration has withheld federal money to demand ideological compliance. America¡¯s once-revered institutions have succumbed to intimidation, eroding the public¡¯s confidence that they could uphold their commitments to free expression.
It¡¯s time for the U.S. to hit reset on this trend. Universities can do it by recognizing that free-speech controversies are an opportunity not to silence, but to teach. Students must learn how to navigate challenging and offensive arguments while modeling civility ¡ª skills and qualities of character that are necessary to sustain a healthy, flourishing democracy.
Mark Berkson, a religion professor who has been on the frontlines of the free-speech war, is making the case for this approach at Hamline University. It¡¯s an important place for it. The private liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, got unwanted national attention in 2022 when administrators fired an adjunct professor who showed a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class. A Muslim student who believed that showing the image was sacrilegious complained and, even though the professor warned students for weeks that she would be discussing the depiction of the holy figure, the university¡¯s president said that respect for Muslim students ¡°should have superseded academic freedom.¡±
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