Universities in many liberal democracies, such as the US, the UK, or Germany, grapple with a pivotal question: how much room should be given to controversial utterances? On the one side, there are those who advocate for limiting permissible speech on campus to create a safe environment for a diverse student body and counter the mainstreaming of…

Higher education in the 2020s remains deeply divided on the role of religion, or what the Council on the Advancement of Standards (CAS) in 2023 describes as "religious, secular, and spiritual identities." In two previous articles in this Journal, one 2010 article by the late Peter Magolda and one in 2014 by Perry Glanzer, detail the ways…

In this article, I argue that one of the paradoxes of the internet age is the contradiction between two aspects of freedom of opinion: expressing an opinion and forming an opinion based on facts. Expressing one's opinion may risk others' freedom to form opinions based on facts, because the freedom to express one's opinion also implies the freedom…

This essay explores with the help of the discipline of philosophy of education the educational implications of the practice of canceling individuals or ideas. In particular, it investigates what gets lost or undermined when we cancel various opinions, words, and practices. To advance my argument, I first introduce some basic definitions while…

A Netflix original six-episode series, "The Chair," examines the experiences of a woman faculty of color department chair at the fictional Pembroke College. One of the many stressors she must navigate is a response to an incompetent white male faculty (who is also her love interest) after he makes a Nazi salute during a lecture in class.…

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on…

In this paper, I criticize two recent and influential arguments for no-platforming advanced by Robert Simpson and Amia Srinivasan and by Neil Levy, respectively. What both arguments have in common is their attempt to reconcile no-platforming with liberal values. For Simpson and Srinivasan, no-platforming does not contradict liberalism if grounded…

The essay addresses the rise of what we elect to call 'the religious left'. Documenting the collapse between radicality and religiosity as identity politics embraces moral absolutism, the essay offers a critique of the culture wars and the ensuing flight from political confrontation. Attending in particular to the failures of the left, which we…

In this essay, I draw on the socio-historical context of free speech and hate speech in U.S. public higher education and the concepts of color-evasiveness and free speech ideology to conceptualize a "color-evasive free speech ideology." The ideology I conceptualize is characterized by a prevailing belief that protecting and defending…

Much has been written regarding student and educator expression in school; however, until recently, family expression seemed to be overlooked in debates on speech and education. Though discussion among education practitioners and researchers on family-school partnerships has continued for over thirty years, thoughtful analysis of interactions…

Electronic communication plays a significant role in most schools and in all of our personal lives as well. The legal question of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable electronic speech for students that is constructed and delivered totally off-campus on such platforms such as Snapchat, Tic Toc, Facebook or Meta, U-Tube, and regular email,…

Moving beyond the nominal recognition of Black lives toward a struggle for Black liberation raises several challenges, one of which is the critical role of political education. For this reason, this article explores Euromodernity's constructions and sustenance of apolitical educational arrangements that constrain political speech fundamental to a…

Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal…

As society becomes increasingly dependent on technology, school leaders must navigate the evolution of websites, resources, and platforms, including social media, as part of their responsibility to facilitate a safe and productive learning environment for students. This article reviews both constitutional and case law as a means of informing…

Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been…