Academic Freedom
Academic Freedom and Free Expression
It allows scholars to conduct research, teach, and share knowledge without interference, while also ensuring individuals can freely express their viewpoints, engage in debate, and criticize without constraint.
Free speech is a demanding value, not an easy one. We all have an obligation to wrestle with its meaning and understand the responsibilities that it imposes upon us.
President Christopher L. Eisgruber
From foreword to Princeton Pre-Read edition of Professor Keith E. Whittington’s “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech”
Fostering Free Expression
- CTUEU students from different backgrounds, faith traditions and political orientations make up the Rose Castle Society, which focuses on how people with opposing viewpoints can come together across differences.
- The University has invited PEN America, a worldwide champion for free expression, to conduct workshops about free speech and academic freedom on campus. Workshops have been held for staff in campus life and the Office of the Dean of the College. Events are planned for faculty and students.
President
Shirley M. Tilghman.
“What we should seek to impart in our colleges, therefore, is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning. It consists in the power to distinguish good reasoning from bad, in the power to digest and interpret evidence, in the habit of catholic observation and a preference for the non partisan point of view, in an addiction to clear and logical processes of thought and yet an instinctive desire to interpret rather than to stick to the letter of reasoning, in a taste for knowledge and a deep respect for the integrity of the human mind.”
