Progress On Campus Free Speech?

By the time the Class of 2020 started its freshman year in the fall of 2016, the Chicago Principles of Free Expression were emerging as a lodestar for higher education. The University of Chicago had assembled a Committee on Freedom of Expression in mid-2014 to articulate “the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.”

The committee’s report, released at the beginning of 2015, states: “Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”

Other schools—starting with Princeton and Purdue—began adopting the principles; and by the fall of 2016 the Chicago principles were widely known, if not ubiquitously shared.

“Universities should be clear about their core educational mission—to provide students with the most enriching education possible,” University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer argued in an August 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed. “We cannot shortchange our students. This means that questioning and challenge must flourish.”