Best Academic Freedom Quotes

"The two main takeaways: Should scholars be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment for their conclusions? If pursuit of truth and social equity goals appear to come into conflict, which should scientists prioritize?"

"200 years ago, a group of students met in a small room in Christchurch determined to have discussion free from the restrictions of the university, and two centuries later, we proudly continue this tradition."

"Professor Nutt is probably better known than most academics because in 2009, he was famously sacked by the UK government for essentially doing his job."

"It is critically important that we allow a diverse perspective of viewpoints and information to be taught in our schools."

"Bell Labs was about pure research, it was a university in some sense, the purest sense of a university but without students."

"Teachers and students shall discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind."

"Academic freedom refers to researchers and academics being free to investigate those topics that interest them and being able to publish their findings publicly without the government removing points of view it doesn't like."

"Neither free speech nor academic freedom guarantees anybody a platform, or the freedom from consequences, criticism, or protest, which are themselves often forms of free speech."

"If you can't discuss radical and wild and out there ideas on a university campus, where on earth can you do it?"

"Encouraging people in the academy to narrow their field of reading and narrow students' reading seems to me to be a bit philistine and irresponsible."

"Open examination of all ideas, even controversial ones, is central to the health of an academic institution."

"Tenure is supposed to give you the freedom to challenge the status quo and to explore things you haven't felt secure enough to explore before."

"This crisis also exposed what we have all known existed, but we tolerated. The bias of the media, the suppression of academic freedom on campuses, the lack of neutrality in big tech, and now, more obviously than ever, the politicization of science."

"Instead of trying to silence our research, it would have been better if the skeptical had done their own studies."

"The Singapore government decided they don't need liberal arts in our university if it teaches dissent and resistance."

"Universities are supposed to be asylums for speech and freedom of thought. If they're no longer asylums for freedom of speech or freedom of thought, they're just an asylum and what useful is that?"

"This is a foreign government telling a college or university what it can or cannot teach on its own campus."

"Words matter and have consequences ever more fraught arguments over speech and academic freedom on American campuses have moved as a flood tide into the sciences."

"Judge Thapar: 'American universities have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated.'"

"More scholars are also speaking out forcefully and defending academic freedom."

"Academic freedom is a terribly important thing; the reason they're protesting at Sing Hwa is that academic freedom at that university has been stripped away."

"This is about eliminating any discussion that might be critical of the United States of America, which is a dangerous thing for democracy." - UCLA Professor Robin DG Kelly

"One of the most disturbing things we're seeing across the country and in colleges and universities is an extreme left-wing censorship."

"I think it's absolutely reprehensible. It's top-down interference with academic freedom and it's extraordinarily dangerous because once that precedent is established then you open the door for political interference."

"The outcome is the lovers, indicating a balanced relationship and mirroring."

"It has to be possible for people to have contrary ideas within science, then have fair discussion within it."

"If I can't publish a Newsweek article from a medical doctor with a PhD and the professor of epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health, then I don't know what we can do or say anymore."

"Free speech is dying on campus and it is not being respected, to put it mildly."

"The most fundamental right that any academic has is the right to be wrong."

"Great universities are places where people of all backgrounds holding all beliefs pursuing all questions can come to study and debate their ideas freely and openly."

"The purpose of a university is not to promote an ideology but to provide scholars and students with a neutral forum for researching and debating our issues without tipping the scales in one direction or repressing unpopular views."

"We're building a university that will be located in Austin, Texas, that will be founded on the principles of academic freedom, intellectual Freedom, as well as meritocracy."

"The questions involved legitimate questions that can arise about the limits even of free inquiry under some context when it's decent."

"Isn't it a national security threat if we are not openly studying this with our brightest minds?"

"In a just world, the truth should be the winners, right? So, what are you going to say?"

"The university has an absolute, absolute, not relative, that absolute obligation to protect the academic freedom of even the most controversial faculty members."

"Science cannot flourish under conditions that stifle falsification."

"It's ideological conformity, which is what these individuals want. They don't want a university in which you can discuss ideas, there's no free debate, there's no marketplace of ideas. All these concepts are alien to them completely."

"There's this sort of group think even within academia where it should sort of be independent and people should be focusing on science and challenging assumptions."

"Universities are places where you should be free to speak your mind and listen even to something that you don't like."

"Theory isn't a bunch of religious texts; you can disagree, but you have to first read their actual work before disagreeing."

"Academic freedom is not about 'no', it's about 'why not'."

"He's gonna have probation. How long of probation is it again? Three years."

"We're very much about open inquiry and defending open inquiry."

"Freedom of speech, open inquiry, and due process."

"Academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism."

"I think the campus has become this sort of closed circle where no other viewpoints can get in."

"Educational institutions should remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right."

"It is not our job as administrators or as faculty members to silence ideas that we find controversial or protect you from them."

"Protesting but faculty members are trying to close in their students and insulate them from hearing other opinions, and that's way scarier than any 20-year-old who doesn't want somebody on their campus."

"Pursue your damn research, tell the truth about it, and let the chips fall where they will."

"DeSantis claims this law solves a viewpoint diversity problem."

"The lack of free exchange of ideas worries me."

"Teachers have to be able to challenge their students with new and possibly threatening ideas and they can't be expected simply to tow political line either on the extreme right or the extreme left or to try to do both at once."

"You cannot do what he's been doing for the last year and expect to win a title."

"People do not have the right to tell you what you can and cannot listen to. This is a university. If we cannot have this conversation here, we can't have it anywhere." - PSU Professor Peter Bogosian

"The principles of the university are supposed to be about students freely discussing ideas, not shutting down speech."

"For science to work, you have to have an open exchange of ideas." - Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

"Science is dependent on free exchange of ideas." - Dr. Martin Kaldorf

"Once you get to your classroom, the freedom that comes with being a professor at Evergreen is so great."

"Even if I fundamentally disagree with every single thing that you said, it's perfectly legitimate for your work to be published, to be peer-reviewed, to be criticized by your peers who are qualified to talk about history."

"Essentially gave economists permission to think."

"This history of suppressing things that are deemed heretical or deemed to be dangerous ideas... it's not a new idea."

"How can scholarship thrive if it's sacrificed on the altar of so-called dignity and respect for an ideology that doesn't even make any sense?"

"Mathematics is the only field left that hasn't been over regulated."

"If we start to sacrifice academic freedom, that's going to bring tragedy to the human race."

"Scientists should not have to face being silenced, intimidated, or defamed as a result of doing ethical work."

"The right to life the right to freedom of expression academic freedom press Freedom all comes along in that."

"The foundation for freedom in our world is freedom of inquiry, freedom of rational inquiry. Don't ever forget that. Freedom of rational inquiry is the foundation of our freedom."

"Without tenure, faculty are liable to play it safe when it comes time to have a classroom discussion about a difficult topic."

"The university did not deny the first amendment rights or academic freedom."

"The blame for squelching debate on campus lies at the feet of the administration and faculty."

"A good professor could make a lot of use of that freedom."

"Freedom of expression is central to the university's values."

"Fortunately, the group that had invited me held its ground and even threatened to sue the school."

"This is the new BLM, this is the new like anti-racism and it to be honest it might even be more powerful."

"Free speech to be the lifeblood of the university."

"If we can't have [debates] on university campuses then I worry that free speech will be stifled in other places and future generations will suffer as a result."

"You're allowed to dispute scientific literature because science means there's a debate."

"That's not the sort of free and open atmosphere of intellectual inquiry we aspire to in western universities."

"A new executive order could strip colleges of funding if they don't support free speech."

"If there is nothing to hide, a historian, no matter what his opinion is, should be allowed to give his opinion."

"I had complete freedom... I had an entire university at my disposal."

"It's against the law to not use these gender pronouns in your class, which is suppression of speech, suppression of academic freedom. It's a complete violation of those things, in fact, and that's totalitarian. I mean, there's no two ways around it."

"We're going to have to douse the flames of polarization between the woke and the anti-woke. Truth matters, and we have to be defenders of truth and academic freedom."

"The Administration allows faculty and students the freedom to do something constructive and different."

"I've been very fortunate in the support I've gotten from MIT and growing up here at MIT and having the freedom and opportunity to do the things I want in mathematics."

"It's about academic freedom; you don't tell an author how to write, you don't change it."

"That attitude poses a real threat to academic freedom, poses a real threat to the openness that should be part of our scholarly, our intellectual, our cultural life."

"If you have university faculty, even tenured faculty, that talk about those things or ask their students to take positions that are contrary to what the students believe, they get grieved against, they get suspended, they get disciplined, and in a sense cancelled."

"Universities are losing their minds. They're supposed to be places that people go to have very heated debates."

"One way to begin to fix the universities is to ensure that they are spaces where free speech is available."

"Once I got the British version of tenure, I had good publications and top journals, I literally said to myself, okay now I'm gonna start being free."

"The dangerous silence in higher education."

"Tenure exists precisely to protect faculty from being targeted for their political beliefs."

"Banning anything from universities is a bad thing."

"Free expression and the ability to question ideas must exist in academia, specifically in higher education."

"We've created a governance structure that's designed to prevent the pathologies that have made so many universities today centers of groupthink, conformism, and wokeism."

"It would be nice for them to have the freedom to question and the freedom to express their research."

"The University of Utah allows us the opportunity, resources, and support to think freely, to live in the world we want, not learn to live in the one that exists."

"AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike."

"Imagine if we just shouted out Niels Bohr and shamed him out of academia because he was disagreeable, we would have never had quantum mechanics."

"The higher education system should be a place where different ideas can come."

"Our relations with other countries have improved, there is more freedom at the universities, lively debates, and greater freedom of the press compared to the past."

"It allows you to explore what you want to do much more freely than you could in a UK university."

"You have a blank check to study whatever the hell you damn well please."

"The right of all students to seek knowledge, debate ideas, form opinions, and freely express their ideas is fully recognized by the university of Central Florida."

"It's something held at once by academics and by academic institutions and it is something like a privilege of freedom in the way in which the conduct of teaching and research is undertaken."

"Amherst has a truly open curriculum; once you pick a major, it's just fulfilling the classes within your major."

"Whatever else the University of Austin is, it's not a conservative institution or as a liberal institution, it is an institution that pursues truth and believes that academic freedom, freedom of speech, those things are indispensable for the successful pursuit of truth."

"Who really credibly can argue against an institution whose sole function is to model academic freedom?"