On Saturday (September 13) something called the Columbia Academic Freedom Council held a day-long conference here in New York. The Council used the event to hand out awards to some 23 recipients. Each of the recipients had not only been punished or ostracized somehow for speaking out as a dissenter from the groupthink of academia, but had also fought back in some way.
The CAFC is composed of members of the Columbia faculty, most prominently law school professor Philip Hamburger, who was listed as a “Co-Chair” along with four others. The organization’s website indicates that it has over 100 members, most but not all of whose names are listed on the site. One hundred may seem like a substantial number, but Columbia’s website lists close to 4800 full time faculty members.
The day’s program was organized into a series of panels, where each panel’s members were award recipients who got to tell their stories. The recipients included some prominent academics from elite institutions, but also some from less-well-known places, including some from community colleges and high schools.
The entire program was some 10 hours long. I was able to stay for about half of it. In many cases I was familiar with the story of the award recipient, but in many others I was not. I thought readers might be interested in the personal stories from a sample of some of the more and less prominent recipients.
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