The Hamas terror attacks of October 7 and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza caused disruptions on many university campuses that moved concerns about campus speech from a limited constituency to front page news, exposing it to new audiences. The grilling of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn by a Congressional committee on the topic of campus antisemitism generated intense coverage, and a near unanimous conclusion—by actors across the political spectrum—that the presidents did a poor job of explaining campus turmoil, how antisemitic speech and conduct were handled under prevailing campus policies, and what they might have done differently to protect their students. Public uproar, the resignation of both the UPenn president and board chair and a narrow escape from that fate by the Harvard president ensure that campus speech won’t soon recede back into the shadows. But the ability to create a campus environment in which students can express their views free of harassment depends on understanding the role of free speech and academic freedom in higher education.

Lost in much of the discussion of how to balance our freedoms with ensuring protection from harm is an appreciation of why universities exist in the first place: what are they for? The core mission of universities is to discover, explore and transmit knowledge, and free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to those goals. Despite the centrality of these values to the mission of the university, they’ve been under assault in recent years from two distinct directions. From one pole, members of the campus community have attempted to suppress views and voices that they perceive as offensive or harmful to vulnerable groups of people. They’ve shouted down, disinvited, shamed, and punished faculty and invited speakers for expressing views they oppose—sometimes with university complicity—more often without administrative comment or intervention. Many view this “cancel culture” as a major problem, while others see its prevalence and impact as exaggerated for political reasons. Whatever its extent, cancel culture has been amplified by programs under the rubric of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) established with noble intent—that have markedly expanded their scope and remit. Today, DEI programs promote speech codes inconsistent with free expression that lead many to self-censor, an outcome that encourages “cancel culture” by silencing its critics and emboldening its advocates. More limited in their goals at the outset, DEI programs and administrators now influence faculty recruitment and curricula, previously the sole dominion of the faculty.