Free Speech and Higher Education
Part 1 of ?
Dear reader, forgive me, but I am desperate, and you are my help.
Let me explain: I am to give a talk in just a few days on the topic of the current state of free speech in higher education…or the need for free speech in higher education…or threats to free speech in higher education…or something. I mean, the focus of the talk is up to me.
And that’s the problem. I am having a great deal of trouble finding my focus. There is so much to say. There is so much I can say—from a historical perspective, from a contemporary vantage point, from personal experience. So much. This topic is so big, it looms so large for me in my research and in my ethical commitments and in my own experience. It is something I could go on about for hours, for days.
But I only have fifteen minutes.
I have given up on using that fifteen minutes to say “the most important thing” about free speech and higher education in our current moment, whatever that is. At this point, I have to settle for saying something, anything, that makes sense…
