Collection

Free Speech on Campus

For well over a century, Americans have been arguing over the extent to which political speech should be protected or restricted on college campuses. This collection gathers some recent writing on the twists and turns of that history.

created by Tony Field on March 20, 2025

University of Berlin, Germany, circa 1900

Academic Freedom’s Origin Story

While academic freedom is foundational to American higher education today, it is a relatively recent development.

by Melissa De Witte via Stanford Graduate School Of Education on May 1, 2023

In 1900, a Stanford professor resigned following a scandal over political comments he made in public. Out of that controversy was born the American Association of University Professors — and a codified definition of “academic freedom.”

Conservative College Campus Counterprotesters with signs saying "Peace Through Victory in Vietnam."

Modern Conservatism Was Born on College Campuses. So Why Does the GOP Hate Them?

Leaders of the political right learned lessons from the 1960s that still inform the movement today.

by Ian Ward, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd via Politico Magazine on September 4, 2023

A conversation with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of a book about how the modern GOP emerged out of the “campus right” of the 1960s.

Flip-Flopping on Free Speech

The fight for the First Amendment, on campuses and football fields, from the sixties to today.

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on October 9, 2017

Jill Lepore reflects on the shifting terrain of campus speech politics: "In the half century between the elections of Governor Reagan and President Trump, the left and the right would appear to have switched sides, the left fighting against free speech and the right fighting for it."

Conservatives Say Campus Speech Is Under Threat. That’s Been True for Most of History.

There’s never been a golden age of free speech at American universities.

by Todd Gitlin via Washington Post on August 11, 2017

Writing in 2017, Todd Gitlin — one of the most prominent student activists of the 1960s — rejected the notion that free speech was under more threat on contemporary campuses than it had been in the past. “Golden ages only show up in rearview mirrors, and even then, objects may be farther away than they appear.”

Abstract art piece showing various different people speaking.

The Campus Controversy Complex

Campus speech debates reveal a history of distorted narratives, balancing free speech, moral standards, and generational conflicts in U.S. universities.

by Adrian Daub via The Pennsylvania Gazette on October 24, 2024

An excerpt from a book that questions the premise of backlash to the infamous campus speech codes of the 1980s and 90s. “Many of the colleges that we read about in articles...had not really created speech codes so much as simply rewritten outdated codes of conduct.”

Fred Dube at a 1981 UN meeting, “South African Women and Labour under Apartheid.”

The Silencing of Fred Dube

Forty years ago, the exiled South African activist dared to teach Zionism critically. A furious backlash ensued.

by Abena Ampofoa Asare via Boston Review on January 18, 2024

The story of a South African academic who was driven from his faculty position at SUNY Stony Brook in 1987 after inviting students to reflect on the connections between Zionism and racism.

Side by side photos of Columbia University protests in 2024 and 1968.

America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.

by Tyler Austin Harper via The Atlantic on May 2, 2024

A journalist speaks with students, professors, and administrators at a range of colleges about the disconnect between their institutions’ marketing of past activism and the treatment of present-day protesters there.

Pro-Israel counterprotesters hold Israeli flags on the edges of a pro-Palestine encampment at Northeastern University in Boston, April 26, 2024.

The New Anti-Antisemitism

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on May 8, 2024

A historian of the 1960s shakes off attempts to find analogs for the heavy-handed response to the 2024 Palestine-solidarity protests, suggesting that what’s happening now may be far more dangerous than anything that's happened in the past.

Protest encampment at University of California Berkeley.

The Free Speech Movement at Sixty and Today’s Unfree Universities

Can speech be free when billionaires buy influence on campus?

by Robert Cohen via Academe on December 4, 2024

Reflections on the continuities between the 1960s and today. ”Viewed side by side, both the [Free Speech Movement] and today’s antiwar movement also reveal that, as Savio pointed out long ago, the undemocratic mode of university governance endures. It is as dysfunctional today as it was in 1964.”