Chapter 5: Campus Speech in Historical Context

Overview of Chapter 5: Campus Speech in Historical Context

This chapter invites readers to engage with salient concepts from the preceding chapters—especially academic freedom, free speech, and the relationship between the two—by exploring campus speech in historical perspective. As its title suggests, the chapter introduces fifth tool for analyzing campus speech in an informed and thoughtful way: historical context. We begin with a brief look at the early days of universities and then jump to consequential events in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Readers will see that the life journey of free speech and academic freedom on campus has not been a straight line. Growth from near irrelevance to near-universal appreciation has come in fits and starts, with progress often uneven and contested.

In response to the ebb and flow of acute campus controversies that tend to put pressure on principle, commentators have long suggested that universities should adopt a policy of neutrality rather than taking positions on matters of the day. On this view, “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”¹⁰ 


Although neutrality policies have their share of supporters, detractors abound. Notably, the president of Princeton rejects neutrality on the ground that “you can’t be neutral about everything,”¹¹ in part because institutions must “stand up” for their core values.” Others believe that universities should not take a one-size-fits-all approach and instead should draft policies that reflect their “distinct history, custom, and values.”¹² 

At the conclusion of the chapter, we ask readers to apply what they have learned about the history of academic freedom and free expression, as well as the tools they acquired in the preceding chapters, to develop a free speech policy for their university—specifically addressing whether it should stay neutral, outright reject neutrality, or take a different path altogether.  

¹⁰Faculty Committee Report, University of Chicago, Kalven Committee Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action (Nov. 11, 1967) (hereinafter Kalven Report). The report is available on the book’s website and at: https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/KalvenRprt_0.pdf.

¹¹Bridget O’Neill, “Princeton President Says University Will Not Consider Institutional Neutrality,” The Daily Princetonian (Sept. 30, 2024), https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2024/09/princeton-news-adpol-president-eisgruber-university-no-institutional-neutrality.

¹²Stanford Historical Society, “How a Stanford Speech Scandal Led to the Invention of Academic Freedom: The Case of Edward A. Ross,” YouTube (Apr. 25, 2023) (presented by Ellen Levine), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AesygiQy0Hs.