On the Justification of Academic Freedom and of Free Speech On the University Campus
40 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2025
Date Written: December 26, 2024
Abstract
Questions of academic freedom, and of free speech on university campuses, have arisen in a variety of specific contexts, all of which this Essay ignores. Instead, this Essay offers a partial explanation of the current status of both academic freedom and of free speech on university campuses in general. The focus is on the gradual erosion of the status of the historic quest for knowledge and truth understood in any classically moral realist or objectivist fashion, particularly in contrast with the pursuit of other prominent university values. The role of cross-culturally recognized moral and epistemic virtues and vices is then explored in this context.
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