Harvard University ranked worst school for free speech in America

Kurt Mahlburg

September 14, 2023 2 Reactions

Of the more than 55,000 college students surveyed, 56 percent said they were worried about their reputation being damaged by what they say or do.

When asked if certain conservative speakers should be banned from campus, 57 percent to 72 percent of respondents agreed, depending on who the speaker was.

More than a quarter of students — 27 percent — believe that using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to some degree.

At the five least-free colleges on FIRE’s 2023 list, attempts to de-platform speakers were successful 81 percent of the time.

Resistance

While Harvard’s horizon looks especially dim, there is a remnant that has not bowed the knee to Baal: this year, more than 120 Harvard professors banded together to form the Council of Academic Freedom at Harvard to promote “free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse”.

The initiative was not enough to move the needle on Harvard’s free speech rankings, but it has carved out a safe haven for those still committed to unfettered intellectual expression.

Writing for the Boston Globe in April, Harvard Professors Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras, founding members of the new council both, began with a sobering snapshot of America’s academic landscape:

Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country.

No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted, and it is vindicated by some alarming numbers.

Then they laid out their game plan:

Naturally, since we are professors, we plan to sponsor workshops, lectures, and courses on the topic of academic freedom. We also intend to inform new faculty about Harvard’s commitments to free speech and the resources available to them when it is threatened. We will encourage the adoption and enforcement of policies that protect academic freedom.

When an individual is threatened or slandered for a scholarly opinion, which can be emotionally devastating, we will lend our personal and professional support. When activists are shouting into an administrator’s ear, we will speak calmly but vigorously into the other one, which will require them to take the reasoned rather than the easy way out. And we will support parallel efforts led by undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students.

Whether or not this noble endeavour is too little, too late — or whether a stultifying woke groupthink will have the last laugh — only time will tell.

One thing is sure: a 387-year pledge to Veritas is at least worth trying to revive.

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Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor. 

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