FIRST THE GOOD NEWS – FROM COLLEGE FIX:  

More than 1,000 professors across the country have signed the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration” that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality.

The open letter calls on universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”

As of Thursday the letter had 1,095 signatures, and it increases daily.

“The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on campus and in the academic enterprise more generally,” Stanford economist and co-author John Cochrane said in an email to The College Fix. “Only with robust academic freedom, the ability to investigate ideas and bring out uncomfortable facts, does scholarship bring about new and reliable knowledge, especially on crucial issues to our society.”

The loss of academic freedom, the letter states, is tied to a leadership crisis.

Many university leaders want to uphold free speech yet “punish those who express views deemed to be incorrect and enforce ideological conformity in hiring and promotions,” it states.

Underscoring the problem is the fact that purse strings — funding resources — are tied to following the accepted narrative instead of a free exchange of ideas, Cochrane said.

“[A]cademic freedom, free speech, and the pursuit of scholarly excellence are under siege at universities, in professional societies, and in government agencies, including those that give grants,” Cochrane said. “Simple facts cannot be spoken out loud. Research that comes to conclusions that counter political narratives can’t be conducted, published, or popularized.”

The declaration signers call on their universities to implement the “Chicago Trifecta” to help resolve that problem: “Freedom is a culture, not merely a set of rules, and a culture must be nurtured.”

Cochrane, on his Grumpy Economist blog, recently pointed out that some academics are scared to sign the letter because other signatories have been labeled as “well known deplorables.”

“That reaction tells us a big part of the problem,” he wrote. “All along we have tried very hard to reach out to self-described left/liberal/democrat colleagues, who privately bemoan what’s going on but are too afraid to be seen in public. But why not fix it: if some of you sign perhaps that will give courage for more of you to sign. Take it over, get together with your friends, add lots of signatures, make this your cause, prove that we can stand together for freedom!”

UC Berkeley statistics Professor Will Fithian told the Daily Californian student newspaper via email that he signed the declaration because “I have heard from many students and colleagues that they are afraid of openly discussing controversial issues.”

COMMENT:  We wish them well.  As the Chinese say, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  It will be a long, bitter fight to restore our universities, and success is not guaranteed.  The other side is littered with Marxist garbage and quick fixes.  The dissenter is risking his career.  But we have some heavy firepower as well – especially a new generation of parents who are taking a renewed interest in their children's education, right up to the college level. 

The market will play a critical role here.  If a new generation of parents and students start rejecting wokeness and its branches, wokeness may well fade away. 

November 18-19, 2022