Science, Politics, and the Contestation of Academic Freedom in the Contemporary United States

• In Event: Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom II: Case Studies

Abstract

As the prominence and reach in society of both scientific expertise and advanced education has significantly increased over the past decades, growing attention has been paid to the role - and contestation - of academic freedom as an intrinsic feature of liberal democracy. The situation in the United States differs from other liberal democracies in various ways, including the frequent conflation - for historic, legal, and political reasons - of academic freedom with freedom of speech. Moreover, severe political polarization, historic anti-intellectualism, and anti-science populism form the backdrop against which academic freedom has come noticeably under pressure across the US in recent years. This is most blatantly the case in various Republican-led states that, in the name of democratic accountability, have adopted legislation that seriously infringes on academic self-governance and the freedom of teaching at public universities. Concurrently, concerns are voiced about perceived pressures towards political conformism in academia, administrative overreach, and a prioritization of student sensitivities over the freedom of teaching. This paper considers what contemporary debates around academic freedom in the US reveal about how the role of science and higher education in democracy, and the relationship between scholarship and politics, are understood and contested.

Author

• Janika Spannagel, Freie Universität Berlin