By: Dr. Jenna Robinson, President of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
Today, North Carolina is one of the top states for free speech and academic freedom on college campuses. This freedom, defined by the American Association of University Professors in 1915 as “freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extramural utterance and action,” is essential to the university’s mission to discover, preserve, and share knowledge.
But the idea that scholars should be free to pursue the truth goes back much further.
In an essay titled “The Religious Roots of Academic Freedom,” William J. Hoye writes, “Popular belief notwithstanding, the birthplace of academic freedom does not lie in the Age of Reason.” Hoye traces “the first known mention of academic freedom in Western history” to 1220, when Pope Honorius III wrote a letter to the University of Bologna encouraging it to defend its “scholastic freedom” against the city government. Hoye notes that Medieval scholastics continued to develop the concept.
Later, enlightenment thinkers and scholars institutionalized and defended academic freedom, which at the time was called “freedom to philosophize.” In an 1820 letter to William Roscoe, Thomas Jefferson described his vision of academic freedom at the soon-to-be-established University of Virginia. “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
North Carolina has been a staunch defender of this tradition, mostly through recent protections for free speech and commitments to institutional neutrality in public universities. Both of these concepts help to protect academic freedom for faculty and students.
By almost any measure, North Carolina leads the way on these important academic protections. North Carolina is home to 15 institutions that earn a “green light” from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) for their speech policies. A green light indicates that “a college or university’s policies do not seriously imperil speech.”
Many North Carolina universities have also embraced the “Chicago Principles for Free Expression, which state that
The University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission.
North Carolina universities are also beginning to embrace the related principle of institutional neutrality, which holds,
The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic…To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.
In 2022, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was the first North Carolina institution to adopt these principles, kicking off a national trend. Since then, 10 additional N.C. institutions have also pledged to depoliticize their campuses by refraining from taking institutional positions on controversial political issues that are not relevant to the university’s mission. This principle ensures that universities provide a true marketplace of ideas.
Our work at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a public-policy advocacy organization dedicated to excellence and accountability in higher education, has played a part in creating this environment of academic freedom. The Martin Center has encouraged transparency, exposed problems, and advocated better university and state policies on free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom. We’re proud of our contribution to academic freedom and excellence.
Universities thrive when scholars and students are free to relentlessly and fearlessly pursue truth. The principles of academic freedom, free speech, and institutional neutrality safeguard that ideal so that universities can continue to “advance the sum of human knowledge.” Although more work remains to be done, North Carolina can be proud of the progress it has made to ensure that our universities remain places of free inquiry, intellectual curiosity, and thoughtful debate.
