It depends who you ask. Many “progressives” on our campuses would say that people should not be free to teach or even discuss ideas that are said to harm “marginalized” communities. That means it’s necessary to silence arguments against their collectivistic agenda. And there are others, more center to right, who disagree and say that we should have unbridled free speech on our campuses. They’re against any efforts by outsiders (politicians or governing boards) to impose any restrictions on faculty members.

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Alexander Riley reviews a recent book taking the latter position.

He writes:

Academic freedom cannot defend the inclusion of just any ideas in college curricula. For example, a professor would be rightly reprimanded or terminated if he taught Nazi theory as a partisan of that theory rather than for its historical interest. Such ideas are fundamentally unsuited for a society based on individual rights. This is the moral compass that ought to guide all of our teaching.

The specific controversy that is central to this debate now is critical race theory and its many offshoots. Riley argues that there’s nothing wrong in trying to keep it out of our classrooms because its tenets are antithetical to a free society. In fact, CRT itself is an attack on academic freedom.

If professors want to talk about or even advocate CRT and related notions, they can do so on their own, but if the college or university decides it has no place in the curriculum, they must respect that.

Read the whole thing.