A couple of years ago the topic at the Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor’s Debate was ‘freedom of speech has its limits’. Dr Anne Summers, leading the team arguing against the proposition, said freedom of speech was an essential pillar of our democratic political system and threats to that freedom should be vigorously challenged whenever they occurred. The audience, many of whom were academics and university students, agreed with Dr Summers and voted overwhelmingly in favour of freedom of speech without limits.

Freedom of speech is a hot topic, particularly in universities. But while the concept is vigorously championed very few people can resist calling for censorship when they do not like what is being expressed. To paraphrase the title of a popular book on free speech, it is very difficult to get people to grant freedom to ideas they hate.

I examine the tensions surrounding free speech and academia in a review of a new book by Matthew Finkin and Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom. The review appears in the latest edition of Policy magazine and you can read the review in full here.

Finkin and Post chart the growth of academic freedom in the United States, where it soon became clear that academics cannot say or do whatever they want. Instead, protected academic opinions must derive from the work of scholars using the methods of their profession in an accurate, reasonable and fair way. As I write:

Note that this formulation of academic freedom is fundamentally different from legal notions of freedom of speech. You are free to say the earth is flat or that two plus two equals five. No one can stop you. But this does not entitle you to hold a Professorial Chair in Geography or Mathematics. Competence is essential. Academics earn the right to special latitude because they are professionals who can competently assess evidence using the norms and methods of their profession.

The book leaves the reader with the strong feeling that academic freedom is worth protecting:

Occasionally, academics will say things that annoy some people but this is the price we pay for advancing knowledge.

- Steven Schwartz