Bathon, Justin M.; Brady, Kevin P. (2010). Teacher Free Speech and Expression in a Digital Age: A Legal Analysis. NASSP Bulletin, v94 n3 p213-226 Sep. In this technological age, the definition of private, public, and protected speech and expression for today's school employees is largely misunderstood and unclear. This article addresses the current legal standards as well as some recent case law involving teacher speech and expression and its major implications for addressing teacher online speech. Finally, this article recommends some best practices for school leaders detailing the appropriate regulation of teacher online speech in the face of these multiple pressures. (Contains 1 figure.)… [Direct]

Letzring, Timothy D.; Wolff, Lori A. (2009). Student Worker Free Speech on the Public Campus: A New Twist to a Constant Issue. College Student Affairs Journal, v28 n1 p5-21. Rather than anticipating an issue or proactively addressing it, college and university administrators often find themselves in the position of reacting to recent laws or court decisions. This paper examines an issue ripe for proactive thought; an issue not yet directly considered in court cases: free speech and the student employee. In the development of First Amendment free speech jurisprudence on public college campuses, which cases and legal theories apply depends on whether the person claiming free speech violations is an employee or a student. A question not yet answered by the United States Supreme Court as it relates to the public higher education setting is: what if the person is both? Further, which standards apply and what are the differences in those standards? Although arguably addressed in the K-12 setting and in the private sector, but yet somewhat hypothetical for public colleges and universities, as student activism and campus student employment increases, the… [Direct]

Rhames, Marilyn Anderson (2019). The "F-Word" of Social and Emotional Learning: Faith. American Enterprise Institute While Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has many different definitions, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines it as "the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions." For millennia, this has been the ethos of religious doctrine, which inspired the creation of schools as a means to instill such values in children who would grow up and govern the world. Yet, schools are missing a golden opportunity to leverage this asset of faith to improve outcomes for kids, particularly in the much-discussed area of SEL. There is perhaps no place in education where the impact of religious faith is more evident than in social and emotional development. And that is because, for millions of Americans, faith powers it. But nobody would know this from looking at the SEL landscape…. [PDF]

Baule, Steven M.; Kriha, Darcy L. (2008). Free Speech in a MySpace World. Library Media Connection, v26 n5 p22-24 Feb. In the potential shadow of a \Bong Hits for Jesus\ banner, complicated student speech and discipline issues arise almost daily on the Internet. Whether it is a mock MySpace page set up to make fun of a teacher or a direct threat to an assistant principal, it is often unclear exactly where school ground discipline ends and student free speech rights begin. Ever since \Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District\ (393 U.S. 503) was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969–with its seminal holding that students do not leave their constitutional rights at the \school house gate\–administrators, teachers, parents, and students have continued to explore the scope of student free speech rights on school grounds and at school events. The Internet and advances in technology have dramatically changed the variables of student speech issues. In this article, the authors argue that in making decisions about student speech via the Internet, it is important to ensure that the… [Direct]

Russo, Charles J. (2009). Social Networking Sites and the Free Speech Rights of School Employees. School Business Affairs, v75 n4 p38-41 Apr. In the midst of growing controversy over the limits of student expression on the Internet, a federal trial court in Pennsylvania addressed the extent to which education officials can restrict the ability of student teachers and, by extension, teachers and other school employees, to exercise their rights to free speech on Internet social networking sites. In "Snyder v. Millersville University" (2008), the court upheld the authority of university officials who, acting in response to requests from educators in a local school district, terminated the assignment of a student teacher. Officials agreed to end the plaintiff's placement because, in addition to concerns about her subject-area knowledge, she violated university directives that she received during her student teacher orientation by posting an inappropriate remark about her cooperating teacher on her personal MySpace page that was accessed by her students. Based on the legal issues that "Snyder" presents for… [PDF] [Direct]

Ingersoll, Julia S. (2017). Factors to Consider When Balancing Campus Safety Concerns with Students' Civil Rights. ProQuest LLC, D.Mgt. Dissertation, University of Maryland University College. On April 16, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech University, known to be mentally ill, went on a rampage shooting 49 people on campus before taking his own life. When it was over, 32 people were dead, and the concept of a safe campus was forever changed. The incident revealed the inherent conflicts between campus safety concerns and students' civil rights, an issue campus across the nation have grappled with over the past 10 years. Public colleges, which are legally viewed as quasi-governmental entities, must satisfy the civil rights compliance requirements that apply to governmental entities. Community colleges have the additional challenge of maintaining a reasonably safe campus while preserving the mission of "open access." Efforts to balance campus safety concerns with students' civil rights have been unsuccessful and have caused confusion, chaos, and litigation. This dissertation is a critical interpretive synthesis of scholarly, legal, and grey literature research that… [Direct]

Amanda P. Fulton (2021). College President Responses to Student Activism on Campus. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan. This dissertation explores presidents' perceptions and the various contexts and experiences that shape their responses to student activism. As a public symbol of the university to students, staff, and faculty as well as the surrounding community, college presidents have a unique role in addressing or (re)acting in response to student movements. However, prior research in student movements does not include the leadership perspective, and most literature operates on the assumption that presidents are an overarching oppositional force. This exclusion may be a result of lack of access to college presidents in higher education research; however, the result has been a conspicuous lack of research and understanding of the ways in which college presidents perceive student activism and choose to respond to student demands made of them. To address this oversight in student movement literature, this dissertation uses interview data from college presidents to determine and analyze their… [Direct]

Bergerson, Amy Aldous; Stryker, Don (2012). Racism, Union Busting, or Just Plain Cultural Conflict?. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, v15 n2 p112-121 Jun. This case describes the struggle of a small school employee association located in a right-to-work state as it attempts to continue exercising influence after a political turmoil caused the composition of the school board to change. This case presents many elements that foster discussion of basic employee rights such as freedom of association, free speech, and due process. As such, this case is designed for usage in educational leadership programs and is particularly pertinent to provoke discussions regarding school politics, employee association authority, preferences in hiring practices, and employee dismissal procedures. Students of educational leadership enrolled in school law, human resources, and/or multicultural education courses can engage in discussion of multiple aspects of course content…. [Direct]

Bartlett, Marilyn J.; Hamblin, DeAnna (2013). Navigating Social Networks. Educational Leadership, v70 n6 p44-47 Mar. The authors note that when it comes to balancing free speech and schools' responsibilities, the online world is largely uncharted waters. Questions remain about the rights of both students and teachers in the world of social media. Although the lower courts have ruled that students' freedom of speech rights offer them some protection for comments made on social media when they are outside of school, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to accept any cases dealing with this issue. In the meantime, teachers appear to be held to a higher standard, and they should be aware that comments they make on social networking sites may make them vulnerable to charges of unprofessional conduct. Until the Supreme Courts decides these matters, educators should think of their social networking identity as an extension of who they are in the classroom, and to navigate with care as they venture into this new world. (Contains 8 cases cited.)… [Direct]

Bergmaier, Michael J.; Hogan, J. Michael; Johnson, Jeremy D.; Kurr, Jeffrey A. (2016). Speech and Debate as Civic Education. Communication Education, v65 n4 p377-381. In light of the U.S. Senate's designation of March 15, 2016 as "National Speech and Debate Education Day" (S. Res. 398, 2016), it only seems fitting that "Communication Education" devote a special section to the role of speech and debate in civic education. Speech and debate have been at the heart of the communication discipline in the U.S. since a group of speech professors broke free from English departments to form the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking in 1914 (Gehrke & Keith 2014). Long before that, a rhetorical tradition dating back to the ancients emphasized training in speech and debate as essential to education for citizenship in a democracy. Therefore, leading scholars, teachers, coaches, and program administrators in speech and debate were invited to a conference presented by the Center for Democratic Deliberation, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Communication Association, to… [Direct]

Cochran, Kelly L.; Hyers, Lauri L.; Schaeffer, Brooke A. (2011). Fundamentalist Demonstrations on the Liberal Arts Campus: Observations and Recommendations. Journal of College Student Development, v52 n5 p598-609 Sep-Oct. This article explores the impact on students when non-university-affiliated conservative fundamentalist Christian groups conduct provocative demonstrations on campus. As university administrators work to balance free speech rights with missions of civility and pluralism, there is a need to assess and address potential adverse impacts of these sensational events. Based on a survey of 97 public university students after a controversial demonstration, we found the most adverse impact to be on students' emotions, followed by disruption to their routines, changes to their feelings of safety, and minor consequences on academic activities. Those closer in proximity to the demonstration reported more adverse effects, and there were small differences in effects as a function of student gender, sexual orientation, and Christian identity. Counter to the ostensibly conservative aims of the demonstration, students typically reported it had little affect on their attitudes or that the… [Direct]

Lindsey, Ursula (2013). Islamist Movement Challenges Universities. Chronicle of Higher Education, Apr. In Tunisian and Egyptian universities, scholars face a growing Islamist resolve to remake their countries on the basis of religious principles. Both Tunisia and Egypt face questions that could affect higher education across the Middle East and North Africa: Can their new Islamist governments spread conservative religious values and also create vibrant, modern universities? Will they respect or restrict academic freedom? And will the legacy of the Arab Spring be a revitalized academe or a stifled one? Tunisian and Egyptian universities have arrived at similar crossroads by different paths. Tunisia is a small, Francophone country with a modern history of strong secularism; Egypt is the most populous Arab country and the birthplace of political Islam. In Tunisia, Islam was kept outside the university for decades, while, in Egypt, Islamist groups and preachers, many of whom espouse a conservative interpretation of Islam that limits free speech and the rights of minorities and women, have… [Direct]

Walsh, Mark (2012). Speech Cases Turned Aside by High Court. Education Week, v31 n18 p1, 22 Jan. The U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to take up two major appeals involving student free-speech rights on the Internet. One appeal encompassed two cases decided in favor of students last June by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia. The other appeal stemmed from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia, upholding a West Virginia school district's discipline of a student over Internet bullying of a another student. The high court's refusal to take up appeals involving school discipline of student speech on the Internet leaves the state of the law unclear for school leaders, parents, and students themselves. Administrators still seek guidance despite the Supreme Court's denial of the cases…. [Direct]

Navracsics, Judit (2014). Input or Intimacy. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, v4 n3 p485-506. According to the critical period hypothesis, the earlier the acquisition of a second language starts, the better. Owing to the plasticity of the brain, up until a certain age a second language can be acquired successfully according to this view. Early second language learners are commonly said to have an advantage over later ones especially in phonetic/phonological acquisition. Native-like pronunciation is said to be most likely to be achieved by young learners. However, there is evidence of accent-free speech in second languages learnt after puberty as well. Occasionally, on the other hand, a nonnative accent may appear even in early second (or third) language acquisition. Cross-linguistic influences are natural in multilingual development, and we would expect the dominant language to have an impact on the weaker one(s). The dominant language is usually the one that provides the largest amount of input for the child. But is it always the amount that counts? Perhaps sometimes other… [PDF]

Hussey, Michael (2014). "Records of Rights": A New Exhibit at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Social Education, v78 n1 p25-28 Jan-Feb. America's founding documents–the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights–are icons of human liberty. But the ideals enshrined in those documents did not initially apply to all Americans. They were, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir." "Records of Rights," a new permanent exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, D.C, allows visitors to explore how generations of Americans discussed and debated how to fulfill this promise of freedom. "Records of Rights" showcases original and facsimile National Archives documents and uses an innovative interactive experience to illustrate Americans' struggles to define rights related to citizenship, free speech, voting, and equal opportunity. "Records of Rights" opened on December 11, 2013, in the David M. Rubenstein Gallery at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. In this article,… [Direct]

Fromm, Megan E. (2010). Everything but "Censorship": How U.S. Newspapers Have Framed Student Free Speech and Press, 1969-2008. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park. Legal scholars rarely focus on student First Amendment rights, and general public understanding of the extent of these rights is vague at best. While media scholars have focused much attention on newspaper coverage of more mainstream issues, no notable attention has been given to examining the way news media cover student First Amendment rights. As future leaders in a democracy, students at public schools are inculcated with notions of civic duty, independent thinking, and a respect for the freedoms that distinguish the U.S. from other countries. However, many public school students are consistently denied their rights to the very same freedoms they are expected to value. When students seek legal action to guarantee First Amendment protections, how U.S. newspapers frame these lawsuits and the students involved can greatly impact public perception of these issues. This study examines newspaper coverage of eight court cases that set precedent on student free speech and press… [Direct]

(2009). Spotlight on Speech Codes 2009: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (NJ1) Each year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) conducts a wide, detailed survey of restrictions on speech at America's colleges and universities. The survey and resulting report explore the extent to which schools are meeting their obligations to uphold students' and faculty members' rights to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and private conscience. This year's report examines the restrictions on speech in force at a large sample of American colleges and universities and identifies emergent trends within the data. The report also addresses recent developments regarding free speech in the university setting, drawing from FIRE's research on university policies and from cases that FIRE has handled over the past academic year. Some highlights from this year's research include: (1) Jackson State University in Mississippi prohibits speech "which degrades, insult [sic], taunt [sic], or challenges another person by any means of communication, verbal [sic],… [PDF]

Feinberg, Joe Grim (2010). Singing All the Way to the Union. Academe, v96 n1 p18-20 Jan-Feb. In early 1909, just over a hundred years ago, the Spokane, Washington, branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) got a reputation as a "singing union." Later that year, the same Spokane branch of the IWW embarked on a massive free speech fight. IWW agitators would arrive on street corners, call on the crowds not to pay for work, and inform them that the union could find them better jobs. The IWW speakers would also sing. Public agitation was an essential part of organizing, and song was essential to agitation. Free speech had been won, not by the bourgeois intelligentsia that usually gets credit for such things, but by the organization and performance-artistry of the working class. Today, people still complain about limits on their free speech. Yet they no longer agitate, and they rarely sing. And graduate students do so least of all. Yet graduate students, no matter how quiet voiced and library prone, are in a special position to revive the proletarian publicness… [Direct]

Barr, Jeanne Polk (2009). The Chicago 8 Trial, 40 Years Later: A Case Study in Teaching "U.S. v. Dellinger" (1969). Social Education, v73 n5 p203-206 Sep. Growing up in an era when protest at national political conventions is carefully contained in "free-speech zones" (often physically removed from the site of the official conventions), students today may have a difficult time conceptualizing the tumultuous scene that was the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. Fueled by the consensus-shattering backdrop of the Vietnam War, the upheaval of a civil rights movement turned violent, the assassinations and abdications of national leaders both beloved and despised, and the cultural chasm opened by a rising generation of questioning youth, the chaos and unrest of that historic confrontation open up a unique opportunity for twenty-first-century youth to review fundamental issues of democracy that continue to shape America's political culture. A perennial issue confronting democracies is: When does free speech become punishable for "intent to incite a riot"? This article offers a blueprint for addressing… [Direct]

Lew-Williams, Casey; Saffran, Jenny R. (2012). All Words Are Not Created Equal: Expectations about Word Length Guide Infant Statistical Learning. Cognition, v122 n2 p241-246 Feb. Infants have been described as \statistical learners\ capable of extracting structure (such as words) from patterned input (such as language). Here, we investigated whether prior knowledge influences how infants track transitional probabilities in word segmentation tasks. Are infants biased by prior experience when engaging in sequential statistical learning? In a laboratory simulation of learning across time, we exposed 9- and 10-month-old infants to a list of either disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words, followed by a pause-free speech stream composed of a different set of disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words. Listening times revealed successful segmentation of words from fluent speech only when words were uniformly disyllabic or trisyllabic throughout both phases of the experiment. Hearing trisyllabic words during the pre-exposure phase derailed infants' abilities to segment speech into disyllabic words, and vice versa. We conclude that prior knowledge about word length… [Direct]

Labaree, David F. (2014). 2013 Dewey Lecture: College–What Is It Good For?. Education and Culture, v30 n1 Article 2 p3-15 Spr. In this 2013 John Dewey Society Lecture I examine the history and the structure of the American system of higher education. I argue that the true hero of the story is the evolved "form" of the American university and that all the things we love about it, like free speech, are the side effects of a structure that arose for other purposes. I tell this story in three parts. First I explore how the American system of higher education emerged in the nineteenth century, without a plan and without any apparent promise that it would turn out well. Then I show how this process created an astonishingly strong, resilient, and powerful structure, which deftly balances competing aims–the populist, the practical, and the elite. Then I veer back toward the issue raised in the title, to figure out what the connection is between the form of American higher education and the things that it is good for. I argue that the form serves the extraordinarily useful functions of protecting those of… [Direct]

O'Neil, Robert M. (2007). 4 Challenges to Free Speech in Academe. Chronicle of Higher Education, v54 n10 pB7 Nov. Free speech in American higher education was sorely tested by three bizarre events in the waning days of September and another incident in early October. Each one has potentially grave implications for free expression and academic freedom, and thus merits closer scrutiny. The first event was the extension, then withdrawal and eventual reinstatement, of an offer of a deanship at the University of California to an outspoken scholar of constitutional law. The second was the lecture given by an anti-Western head of state, a vehement Holocaust denier, at Columbia University, along with a less than cordial welcome by the university's president. Meanwhile, though barely noted, the University of California's Board of Regents withdrew a speaking invitation to an eminent economist who is better known as a former president of Harvard. Finally, just as the dust was settling, the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, declined to invite to the campus, as one of a series of Nobel laureates, a… [Direct]

Oravec, Jo Ann (2012). Bullying and Mobbing in Academe: Challenges for Distance Education and Social Media Applications. Journal of Academic Administration in Higher Education, v8 n1 p49-58 Spr. Bullying and mobbing are migrating to online realms, intensifying the damage involved and increasing the complexities of these issues. Social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) are intensely communal in many senses; they may serve to increase the negative aspects of bullying and mobbing as well as provide community-oriented tools for mitigation. Academic environments such as distance education also introduce intricate dimensions to these concerns, especially involving online freedom of speech and privacy issues. Younger individuals in academic realms may not be aware of the power of words and images to harm, especially in seemingly playful online contexts. Higher education institutions are legally and morally constrained in terms of student and employee privacy and free speech, which can make it difficult to protect victims and control the dissemination of often-damaging information. Many social media platforms allow for the surveillance and recording of incidents of bullying and… [PDF]

Nelson, Trudi J. (2011). Assessing Internal Group Processes in Collaborative Assignments. English Journal, v100 n6 p41-46 Jul. As teachers consider ethics, they find that it may often look like a student issue. It may be discussions of plagiarism, social justice, honesty, bullying, privacy, child labor, free speech, inequity. However, even as teachers struggle with ways to model ethics or \teach\ ethics, they find that their teaching practices may warrant reflection. One of these may be the question of distinguishing between the group and the individual when assessing products done in a group-work setting. Involving students in close examinations of their work in groups can increase the effectiveness of collaborative learning strategies. However, asking them to work in groups can also raise practical and ethical questions about assessment. Drawing on a survey of her students, the author discusses some of these issues and suggests workable solutions. (Contains 1 figure.)… [Direct]

Walsh, Mark (2007). Rights at Stake in Free-Speech Case. Education Week, v26 n27 p1, 28-29 Mar. Despite the less-than-weighty incident at its core–the display of a homemade banner emblazoned with "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"–a case that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up carries potentially far-reaching consequences for student speech, and for the legal protections of public school educators. From a sea of controversies over student speech–on T-shirts, in classroom assignments, on Web pages, and in other forms that have conveyed political, religious, or arguably violent or offensive messages–the justices have chosen to review the case of an Alaska senior at Juneau-Douglas High School who was disciplined for exhibiting the banner at an Olympic-torch relay outside the school in January 2002. It was a fleeting statement that its creator describes as lacking in any particular meaning other than to provoke. Upset by the banner's reference to drug paraphernalia, Ms. Morse asked Mr. Frederick and the others to drop the banner, according to court papers. When Mr. Frederick… [Direct]

Korenman, Joan; Labanowski, Jan K.; Leary, Patrick (2007). Free Speech, Quality Control, and Flame Wars. Academe, v93 n1 p50-55 Jan-Feb. The authors who happened to be moderators of academic online discussions bring tales from the trenches. Whether it's computational chemistry, the history of the book, or women's studies, the technology and the users can both prove difficult. The first author talks about two scholarly discussion lists. SHARP-L, whose name comes from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, focuses on book history, and VICTORIA is devoted to the culture and society of nineteenth-century Britain. The second author talks about mixing the media on CCL.NET, an Internet-based public forum on the use of computers in chemistry for almost sixteen years. The third author talks about moderation on WMST-L…. [Direct]

Ginwright, Shawn (2011). Hope, Healing, and Care: Pushing the Boundaries of Civic Engagement for African American Youth. Liberal Education, v97 n2 p34-39 Spr. Issues such as joblessness, violence, and substance abuse have threatened some forms of civic life and community well-being in African American urban neighborhoods. And for young people, a diminished capacity for hope is one of the most significant threats to civic engagement. Community organizations are responding to this crisis by creating opportunities for healing through caring relationships, strong social networks, and action taken to improve social conditions. Given the vibrant role of young people in the civil rights, free speech, Black Power, and other movements, additional research is needed to provide a more nuanced understanding of the contours of activism and civic engagement among African American youth. Further, a more robust understanding of how social settings and political contexts influence civic opportunities would help explain why youth of color seem to be disconnected from political life today…. [Direct]

Sanders, Steve (2008). When It Comes to Free Speech, Is a Professor Just Another Government Employee?. Chronicle of Higher Education, v54 n47 pA26 Aug. A case pending in a federal court of appeals in California may clarify a surprisingly murky question: Do faculty members at public universities enjoy a special privilege to speak freely about institutional matters, or, as far as the First Amendment is concerned, are they just another category of government hirelings? Juan Hong, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of California at Irvine, sued the university after he was denied a merit salary increase in 2005. The denial was in retaliation, Hong alleges, for his history as a self-described "outspoken critic of university administrators on their mismanagement of their administrative responsibility." In one incident, Hong complained that too much teaching in his department was being done by lecturers rather than tenured professors. In another, he criticized his chair and dean for extending an informal employment offer to an assistant professor before a faculty vote. Hong also mounted… [Direct]

Eckes, Suzanne E. (2013). Thou Shall Not Do What Thou Wants. Principal Leadership, v14 n2 p8-10 Oct. Imagine a teacher who posted pictures of their favorite presidential candidate during the election season or a teacher who displayed a poster with the tenets of Scientology in the classroom. At issue in those scenarios is the extent to which teachers' expression in the classroom is protected by the First Amendment. This column focuses on a recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case that addressed whether a math teacher in San Diego was allowed to hang religious banners in the classroom. In "Johnson v. Poway Unified School District" (2011), it was noted that school officials permitted teachers to decorate their classroom with posters that included various messages. Although some teachers displayed posters of the Beatles, others displayed pictures of Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. The math teacher involved in this case displayed two very large banners in his classroom. The first banner used the mottoes "In God we trust," "One nation under God," "God… [Direct]

Badley, Graham (2009). A Place from where to Speak: The University and Academic Freedom. British Journal of Educational Studies, v57 n2 p146-163 Jun. The university is promoted as \a place from where to speak\. Academic freedom is examined as a crucial value in an increasingly uncertain age which resonates with Barnett's concern to encourage students to overcome their \fear of freedom\. My concern is that the putative university space of freedom and autonomy may well become constricted by those who would limit not just our freedom to speak but also our freedoms to be and to do. Without academic freedom students and teachers, who might be able to fly, will not be permitted to fly. I review issues of academic freedom and free speech raised especially by Berlin, Voltaire, von Humboldt, Mill, Milton and Rorty. I discuss problems raised when free speech is heard by others as harmful and offensive to their beliefs and values. I offer a set of suggestions to ensure that the university may envision itself as a space of freedom, pluralism and tolerance. Finally, I reflect that the university, of all democratic institutions, should be the… [Direct]