Democracy Works28 Feb 2022

What academic freedom really means in a democracy

What should academic freedom look like in 2022? How has it become conflated with the idea of free speech? Who should decide how issues regarding faculty speech should be adjudicated? Those are just a few of the questions we explore this week with Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, authors of It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom.

The book considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Bérubé and Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. They argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.

Bérubé is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Penn State; Ruth is a professor of film at Portland State University. They've also coauthored Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments.

Additional Information

It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy and the Future of Academic Freedom

Related Episodes

Jonathan Rauch on The Constitution of Knowledge

Are land-grant universities still democracy's colleges?

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(331)

How to create social change that sticks

Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change and democracy reform are structural. They are larger than any one person can solve on their own, ye...

18 Mai 38min

Talk Nerdy: Black Evidence with Candis Watts Smith

Democracy Works host Candis Watts Smith joins Cara Santa Maria on the Talk Nerdy podcast to discuss her new book, Black Evidence: A History and a Warning. From Reconstruction to Redemption, from the e...

4 Mai 1h 4min

When politics enters the doctor's office

From the COVID-19 pandemic to debates over vaccines and the Make America Healthy Again movement, politics and medicine are intertwined in ways not seen in previous generations. When politics enters th...

20 Apr 31min

The Declaration of Independence and democracy renovation

Danielle Allen's work straddles the line between past and present. On one hand, she's on the road this year talking about America's 250th anniversary in the context of her book on the Declaration of I...

6 Apr 46min

Janet Napolitano on higher education and democracy

What is the role of higher education in a democracy? To what extent should American universities respond to the demands of those in power? Are we meeting this moment? As a former governor, cabinet sec...

16 Mar 34min

Is public media still public?

Ayesha Rascoe, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and Weekend Up First, joins us to discuss what it's like being a political reporter in a polarized country and what the "public" in public media loo...

2 Mar 20min

Embracing mindful democracy

Democracy is often framed as a battle between political candidates or parties that have opposing viewpoints and are trying to win over voters to join their side. However, there’s another way to think ...

16 Feb 38min

How AI is changing democracy

AI is changing many aspects of our lives, so it's reasonable to expect that it will impact democracy, too. The question is how? Two experts in technology and politics join us to discuss how we can har...

2 Feb 46min