The University of Chicago Communications Department kindly emailed this in (News office). Please leave a comment or send an email in with your views.
Address Delivered by Robert J. Zimmer at Columbia University Conference "What is Academic Freedom for?"
October 21, 2009
http://president.uchicago.edu/speeches/columbia_address.shtml
...
The challenges to academic freedom can be directed at individuals or at the institution as a whole, and they can come from sources external or internal to the university. There are three categories I would highlight for our discussion today:
i) External forces on the university from the government, other formal authorities, media, financial supporters or alumni to take action against individual faculty members or students for their views; or external pressure directly against individuals themselves.
ii) Internal forces on faculty or students intended to stifle expression of individual views or perspectives that some deem objectionable. These can be explicit, but are often implicit because of an ambient culture of what is deemed acceptable.
iii) External and internal pressures on the university to take a political position that is widely perceived as just.
...
Comments