In response to recent events at Claremont McKenna College (CMC), ACTA reached out to the college’s board of trustees, calling on them to take additional steps to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus.
Earlier this month, student protestors disrupted a presentation by Heather MacDonald, an author and Manhattan Institute scholar, who had been invited to give remarks. On the heels of numerous other disruptions, disinvitations, and violations of campus free speech, the MacDonald incident once again raises concerns about protections of academic freedom and freedom of expression in higher education.
Our letter commends CMC for adopting the Chicago Principles on free expression to make clear to the entire college community that academic freedom is vital to its educational mission. ACTA is now urging the CMC board to ensure that the College vigorously enforces existing policies imposing sanctions for disruptions that violate its community values.
ACTA will continue to monitor the situation.
A committee of faculty members from across the University of Chicago was convened by President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs, chaired by Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law. They were charged with crafting a statement “articulating the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation […]
This guide for trustees reports on the dangerous decline of academic freedom and intellectual diversity on college campuses. The foreword, by Benno Schmidt, chairman of the CUNY Board of Trustees and former president of Yale, comes at a time when duly-invited graduation speakers are made unwelcome, campus speech codes threaten the free exchange of ideas, […]
This report features ten best practices, gleaned from colleges and universities across the country, for promoting the free exchange of ideas in and out of the classroom. Since intellectual diversity is at the core of any true university education, the report commends institutions that have taken action, urges them to keep at it, and exhorts […]
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