What should academic freedom look like in 2022? How has it become conflated with the idea of free speech? Who should decide how issues regarding faculty speech should be adjudicated? Those are just a few of the questions we explore this week with Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, authors of It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom.
The book considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Bérubé and Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. They argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.
Bérubé is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Penn State; Ruth is a professor of film at Portland State University. They've also coauthored Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments.
Additional InformationIt's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy and the Future of Academic Freedom
Related EpisodesJonathan Rauch on The Constitution of Knowledge
Are land-grant universities still democracy's colleges?
A summer of the individual vs. the common good
Extreme maps, extreme politics [reboradcast]
Jan-Werner Müller on democracy's rules
Does Congress promote partisan gridlock? [rebroadcast]
Pete Davis is dedicated to the hard work of democracy
Masha Gessen on the Moscow duel
Walter Shaub on transparency, ethics, and democracy
A different take on local news and democracy
How to end democracy's doom loop [rebroadcast]
Democracy as a way of life
Your guide to ranked-choice voting [rebroadcast]
Is it possible to overdo democracy? [rebroadcast]
Looking back to move forward
The people vs. the bureaucrats in Flint
There is no "I" in democracy
How democracies can win the war on reality
Conspiracism finds a home on the intellectual right
The Federalist Society's ideas have consequences for democracy
Colored Conventions show us where democracy really happens
Can pranksters save democracy?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
City Manager Unfiltered
Potencial Americano
The ASIC Podcast
The Chris Plante Show
Red Eye Radio