Academic Freedom: Rights and Responsibilities
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society is pleased to announce a new series of events entitled “Academic Freedom: Rights and Responsibilities.” At a time of heightened attention to academic freedom, the Center for Ethics in Society seeks to stimulate campus conversation about the intellectual foundation, history, and evolution of academic freedom.
The series will have two tracks – one aimed at faculty and staff and a separate track aimed at students. The first event aimed at undergraduates took place on Feb 23. You can read more about the Socrates at Sunset event series here. The first event aimed at faculty and staff was on March 9, featuring three Stanford faculty — Ivan Marinovic, Tomas Jimenez, and Joshua Landy: Jiménez discussed a faculty statement on open and inclusive discourse, Iván Marinovic presented a faculty petition urging Stanford to publicly endorse the University of Chicago statement on free expression, and Joshua Landy discussed academic responsibility as the ideal counterpart to academic freedom.
Our second event will take place on Monday, April 18, as we explore the intellectual terrain and historical evolution of academic freedom. The panel will feature Emily Levine and John Tomasi. Levine is a historian and Associate Professor of Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her latest book, Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University narrates the origins of higher education in the US and Germany during the nineteenth century through post-World War II. Levine will address Stanford’s role in the adaptation of academic freedom from Germany to America and its evolution from a positive to negative liberty. Tomasi is the President of Heterodox Academy, an organization of 5k+ academics committed to promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning. Tomasi will be discussing those three values and what they mean. Rob Reich, the faculty director of the Center for Ethics in Society, will introduce and moderate the discussion.