THREE HEAVYWEIGHT DEFENDERS OF FREE SPEECH AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM: “So They’re Trying to Shut You Up: How to defend yourself in a free-speech crisis, whatever your politics.”

Calls to take disciplinary action against — and even fire — professors for saying controversial things have become disconcertingly common. Students, administrators, and sometimes even faculty colleagues demand that a professor be punished for expressing dissent publicly — and even privately — from certain widely held views on campus. Politicians and political activists have also gotten into the act, sometimes insisting that a professor be fired before the sun goes down.

Apparently it is not enough to criticize or ignore remarks that are considered to be offensive or inflammatory. The sinner must be hauled before a tribunal, made to recant, disciplined, or even removed from the campus.

 

Many professors have no idea what to do when a mob is howling for their heads. They have never been through such an ordeal before, and are naturally frightened and rattled. Fortunately, many American colleges and universities have policies in place to protect the academic freedom of research scholars and instructional faculty members. Moreover, some professors have the benefit of tenure protections that can hamper administrative attempts to summarily dismiss them, if only to placate the mob.

 

But those protections are not enough if academics do not know how to make use of them, or if they make mistakes in the heat of the moment that can undermine their legal position. And rules are only as good as the people who apply them.

 

Faculty members who find themselves on this unfamiliar terrain need a first-aid kit to minimize the damage until they are able to secure legal assistance to help them navigate the perils of a free-speech controversy. In some cases, self-help will be sufficient to weather the storm. In others, professors will need to prepare for a longer fight in order to keep their jobs and their professional standing.

 

We offer the following advice as members of the newly formed Academic Freedom Alliance, made up of more than 400 faculty members who span the nation and the ideological spectrum. The group exists to provide moral, strategic, and legal assistance to faculty members whose academic freedom and/or job status have been harmed or jeopardized improperly for something they have said or written. We’ll start with a few broad principles, and then some practical tips, for all faculty members — whatever their politics — who run into trouble after expressing their views.