Harvard in Focus: The Importance of Free Speech and Academic Freedom

In this post we take a close look at current controversies and concerns at Harvard University, over both academic freedom and its close cousin free speech. In particular, we’ll review the importance of academic freedom for a top-notch education, look at what’s behind the decline of academic freedom at Harvard, and explore what Harvard is doing to restore academic freedom and establish norms and policies that encourage free speech and open dialogue. We'll also put these concerns into perspective for students asking themselves how much issues of academic freedom should influence their assessment of Harvard and their larger decision-making process.

Introduction

In this blog post we’re going to take a deep dive into what’s happening around issues of academic freedom at Harvard, explaining why a decline in academic freedom can impact many aspects of students’ educational experience, including academic rigor, intellectual exchanges inside and outside the classroom, and community life.

We’ll highlight the prominent concerns about academic freedom at Harvard today and explore the probable causes.

We’ll also explore ways faculty and students say they're experiencing life on campus when Harvard is struggling with threats to free speech and academic freedom, and how Harvard’s leadership, faculty, and students are taking some substantial steps to address concerns about academic freedom.

Finally, we’ll provide some tips to help you put all of this into perspective — especially if you’re someone currently considering applying to or attending Harvard.

Other blog posts in this series:

The Cost of Prestige: What’s Behind Harvard’s Ever-Rising Price Tag

Grade Inflation at Harvard: What Does It Mean for Academic Rigor?

Is Harvard Still Worth It? The Value of an Ivy League Education in 2024

What Is Academic Freedom?

Academic freedom is such a foundational principle in higher education that it’s often taken for granted. You can’t really have a disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge or a concept of objectivity, without academic freedom.

Academic freedom safeguards scholars’ intellectual pursuits and their capacity to teach, research, and publish without interference or restriction, whether from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure or coercion.

While academic freedom, on principle, may hardly seem controversial, standing up for the free exchange of ideas and academic viewpoints can be more complicated in periods of heightened controversy or polarization.

Likewise, universities are the domain of academic researchers, but not controlled or governed by them directly or autonomously. This means the special interests of university donors, board members, or trustees can come into conflict with professors’ academic pursuits, findings, or ideas.

The principles of academic freedom recognize the importance of insulating the pursuit of academic truth from being unduly influenced or restricted by social pressures, special interests, or school officers.

But sometimes the pursuit of Veritas (truth) — Harvard’s motto — can lead to what some perceive as inconvenient truths that conflict with others' special interests or beliefs. As First Amendment attorney Zach Greenberg said in an interview with Inside Higher Education “It’s always difficult to defend academic freedom in times of intense controversy and debate in our society.” This is why debates over academic freedom commonly return to the foreground.

There are many kinds of influences or conflicts that can potentially impinge upon academic freedom and free speech:

• Divisions within academia may pit professors against one another, or put professors and students into conflict.
• Power struggles between professors, on one side, and university leaders, board members, or funders, or other powerful interests outside the university as well, may pose threats to free and open research, teaching, and expression.
• Student activism and political speech may lead to disagreements about the limits of free speech and expression on campus, overlapping with issues related to academic freedom.
• Divisive issues or events outside the university may erupt into conflicts around speech and academic freedom within universities.

When you think about it, all of this makes clearer why academic freedom and academic rigor can go hand in hand, why academic freedom is needed but hard to protect, and why debates around academic freedom or calls for renewed commitments to academic freedom can often return to center stage.

Is Academic Freedom a Concern at Harvard Today?

Concerns about academic freedom at Harvard today have been voiced by factions within and outside the university and have been amplified by the Israel-Palestine conflict, campus protests, and by deep cultural and political divisions. According to a recent faculty survey conducted by The Crimson, for example, approximately 75 percent of Arts and Sciences faculty surveyed believe that academic freedom in America is under threat, only 11 percent believe it is not.

Criticism Amid Protests

When controversies over Middle East conflicts arose in 2023 and 2024, Harvard was criticized by politicians and students in disputes about what speech was protected or not protected, how to interpret controversial speech to determine what should be categorized as harassment and hate speech vs. protected political speech.

For example, when is it okay to express political viewpoints about the conflict in the Middle East, and when does this kind of speech cross the line into unlawful or threatening forms of antisemitic or anti-Muslim hate speech?

Clearly, with such a divisive issue and engaged students and other university members seeking to amplify strong viewpoints, it’s little wonder that both student speech and academic freedom were likely to come into focus and come under threat.

During a congressional inquiry into pro-Palestine protests at Harvard and other elite universities, some politicians in congress expressed concerns that Harvard and other schools were failing to curtail anti-Semitic hate speech — allegedly invoking free speech principles to shield hate speech.

However, these same university leaders were criticized by pro-Palestinian and anti-war protestors on their campuses for attempts to characterize political protest as antisemitism — as hate speech.

Problematic Survey Findings

Surveys of Harvard faculty have also raised some alarms about academic freedom at Harvard.

The FIRE Survey

An annual survey by FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) used to score and rank universities on the state of academic freedom and free expression protections has not gone well for Harvard in recent years. Despite its ranking as a top university, Harvard has repeatedly scored very low in FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Survey. And in 2023, Harvard’s results on the survey were described as downright “abysmal.”

Harvard’s 2023 Faculty Survey

Adding fuel to the FIRE survey — pardon the pun — the results of another survey, The Crimson 2023 Faculty Survey , also raised questions about academic freedom and an openness on campus to the free expression of diverse viewpoints.

For example, the survey found that “more than 77 percent of surveyed Harvard [undergraduate] faculty identified as either 'very liberal' or 'liberal.'”

By contrast, only 2.9% of Harvard’s faculty identified as “conservative” or “very conservative.”

This lopsided ideological state of affairs is likely to raise questions:

How can Harvard be an institution that fosters the free exchange of ideas and diverse perspectives and viewpoints with such an extreme imbalance in political views across its faculty?

Won’t students and faculty who adhere to minority viewpoints feel compelled to hide their views or “self-censor” in some measure?...

The Crimson survey also probed felt about the state of academic freedom:

• 76% of surveyed faculty agreed that academic freedom is under threat in America, with only 11% in disagreement
• Over 36% said Harvard itself should be putting more emphasis on protecting academic freedom

Despite its stellar reputation academically around the world, there seems to be no clear consensus on campus that academic freedom is alive and well. Should prospective Harvard students be holding the school to a higher bar as they weigh the value of a Harvard education?

What’s Behind the Decline in Academic Freedom at Harvard?

While many within and outside of Harvard are signaling concerns about a decline in academic freedom at the school, we still need to ask what’s behind the decline?

While it’s hard to measure exact causes and effects, it’s not hard to point to numerous factors likely to present challenges to maintaining the high levels of academic freedom, free speech, and open dialogue you'd expect at an institution like Harvard.

Pervasive Political Polarization

Some faculty at Harvard are adamant that right-wing political and social movements are threats to the pursuit of truth and the open exchange of ideas, while others point to left-wing ideologies — “woke-crazed students and cancel culture” for example — being responsible for a climate of intolerance, according to reporting about Harvard’s campus climate.

With Harvard being a focal point of academic and intellectual leadership and prestige in the US, it serves as an "incubator of ideas" that often impact the larger national discourse. This means free speech and academic freedom at Harvard, and schools like it, will often come under the magnifying glass, especially in times of heightened political and social polarization.

Religious Conflicts

As some students and faculty, feel compelled to be more and more outspoken about armed conflict between Israel and Palestine — with sentiments inflamed by accusations of terrorism, religious zealotry, torture, and even genocide — division and polarization are escalating on campus. Many members of the campus community are expressing concerns about antisemitism and anti-muslim sentiments creating a climate of fear and insecurity on campus.

Political Hijacking of Elite Universities

Whether they like it or not, because of their role as standard-bearers of higher education in the US — with reputations as training grounds for new generations of top US leaders in business, law, government, and science — schools like Harvard can quickly become emblems of deep ideological divides, making them political targets.

A CNN report tried to sum it up this way:

While there are clear political motivations at play in the right’s assault on the country’s most storied universities, the controversies are also unfolding at a fraught moment in higher education. Elite universities are being buffeted by claims that they are tainted by the political doctrines of the left and that colleges are becoming less a place to prepare new generations and more an incubator of radical ideology.

Ideological antagonisms like these can splinter the campus community, creating factions within the school that put professors, school leaders or trustees, and even the school’s major donors, into potential conflicts or disagreements — amplifying political and ideological conflicts that lead to attacks on free speech and make it harder to maintain academic freedom and open dialogue.

Elitism

The impacts of elitism may also be corroding academic freedom and academic rigor. In an essay published in the NY Times recently, Yale history professor David W. Blight argued that it’s time for elite universities to “look in the mirror” and acknowledge and address misguided obsessions with rankings and endowments while growing insular and dogmatic and losing sight of their core academic values.

As a result, argues Blight, “universities like Yale need a reckoning” because they're neglecting their missions and commitments to meaningful public obligations and service, and they’re diminishing the import and scope of free academic discourse.

For Blight, the current political upheaval in the US should be a wake up call for Yale, Harvard, and other elite schools:

History has been waiting to explode our hubris; and sometimes even as we have facts, truth and rule of law on our side, we make ourselves good targets with our jargon, our righteousness and our fragmentation.

How Is Harvard Impacted by the Decline in Academic Freedom?

Even if Harvard doesn’t have control over all of the various forces impacting it, the decline in academic freedom can have pervasive consequences for academic rigor and campus life.

Impediments to academic freedom are likely to restrict intellectual inquiry and deter professors from fully grappling with diverse ideas, topics, or viewpoints. These impacts can stifle discussion and dialogue in the classroom and outside of it, with consequences for learning, relationship building, and networking…

• Classroom discussions may not be as wide ranging due to fear or self-censorship.
• Academic discourse and debate, or opportunities for provocative discussion and reflection are more likely to descend into partisan attacks.
• Faculty and students become less trusting and don’t build and exercise their capacity for constructive forms of reasoning, deliberation, and honest truth-seeking.

All of this can diminish the value of undergraduates' experiences at Harvard and leave them less prepared after graduation for their professional pursuits — in business, policy, law, economics, politics, scientific innovation, ethics, and more.

How Harvard Faculty Experience the Impacts

A recent report from a Harvard working group tasked with “assessing the state of open inquiry and constructive dialogue on campus” documented some significant concerns over perceived declines in academic freedom:

• only 49 percent [of faculty respondents] reported that they are comfortable leading a classroom discussion about controversial issues
• only 32 percent [of faculty respondents] reported that they are comfortable discussing such issues outside of the classroom

When professors feel unable to speak freely about their findings, perspectives, and ideas, this can impact the integrity of their research, what they teach, and the open exchange of ideas and competing viewpoints.

How Students Are Impacted

Here’s what Harvard’s working group reported about students they surveyed:

• 45 percent of survey respondents reported that they are reluctant to share their views about charged topics in class
• 38 percent of survey respondents reported that they are uncomfortable discussing such issues outside of the classroom

Students may feel their authentic voice or perspectives aren’t going to be accepted or respected, stifling individual expression — whether in formal classroom discussions, academic work, or in more informal discussions with peers and friends. This can lead to feelings of distrust, isolation, and self-censorship.

These factors can create a distorted or illusory sense of “community” as well, by fostering tribalism that thrives on groups that are close-knit but also more closed minded and more closed off socially — limiting friendships, restricting dialogue, and creating invisible barriers to the kinds of interactions that foster greater consensus building and inclusion.

Ultimately, when academic freedom and open speech aren’t actively defended — let alone vigorously encouraged as they should be at an elite university like Harvard — the vibrant exchange of ideas essential for intellectual growth and innovation is diminished. Students are deprived of opportunities to fully challenge others' ideas and their own, limiting their ability to become well-rounded, critical thinkers prepared to engage with the complexities of their professions and their world.

Is the Harvard Community Improving Academic Freedom?

As we see all the evidence, concerns, and impacts related to free speech on campus and a decline in academic freedom at Harvard, it begs the question is anything being done about it?

The truth is that yes, something is being done. Broad cross sections of the Harvard community are exercising leadership and taking action on diverse fronts to improve the academic climate.

Across the university community, various stakeholders are rolling up their sleeves so to speak, engaging in efforts to build a campus culture addressing norms, instructional practices, and governance structures with the aim of protecting, restoring, and cultivating academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas across the school’s pluralistic community.

We’ll let you be your own judge of how Harvard is responding to concerns about academic freedom, but here are some of the more prominent initiatives we found, all of which were launched recently, in 2023 or 2024.

1. Change in Harvard Leadership

When former Harvard president Claudine Gay was publicly criticized for not taking a stronger stand against alleged hate speech on campus, she nonetheless received support from many quarters, with people recognizing that external forces, not school leaders or school policies, were behind the divisions and animosities tearing at the fabric of community life at Harvard. Gay still eventually resigned because of a plagiarism controversy, however, which paved the way for a new president to be appointed at the beginning of 2024, Dr. Alan Garber.

Upon taking office, Dr. Garber called for the entire Harvard community to pursue academic excellence together, living into an excellence “made possible by the free exchange of ideas, open inquiry, creativity, empathy, and constructive dialogue among people with diverse backgrounds and views.”

This quick action under the new president sends a signal that Harvard leadership will address concerns about academic freedom.

2. A New University Working Group

In the spring of 2024, under Garber’s leadership, Harvard officials convened an  Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group to explore how to “nurture a culture of open inquiry and constructive dialogue at Harvard.” On October 1st, 2024, the university released the Working Group’s exploratory report stating:

The habits, norms, and practices that promote open inquiry and constructive dialogue, if widely shared, can help bridge our differences. We can forge a shared identity as members of this University community who are committed to excellence and engaged together in research, teaching, learning, and service for the common good. Learning to thrive in such a campus community has the added benefit of preparing us intellectually and socially to thrive in our modern world: a democratic society composed of many individuals, identities, experiences, and viewpoints.

This quick action under the new president sends a signal that Harvard does care about academic freedom and wants to understand the scope of the issues involved and find ways to invigorate principles and norms of academic freedom and open debate and dialogue.

3. CAFH

In 2023, Harvard faculty members founded CAFH, the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard in order to promote “academic freedom, civil discourse, and viewpoint diversity at Harvard.” This new initiative seeks to create a more open and inclusive environment for the exchange of ideas, addressing growing concerns about the limitations on free expression within the academic community.

The council has deliberative and democratic norms and members actively engage with school leaders and faculty to improve academic freedom, to share principles and policy recommendations, and to advocate for faculty who have concerns about academic freedom.

4. Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Committee.

Initiated by Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, the Intellectual Vitality Committee is an innovative effort aimed at revitalizing academic freedom and fostering a healthier, more pluralistic academic community.

The committee is composed of a diverse group of undergraduates, faculty, and alumni who aligned to address shared concerns about academic freedom and a lack of genuine dialogue across differing viewpoints. Philosophy professor Edward J. “Ned” Hall, who helped form the group, is also CAFH co-president.

Over the past two years, members have quietly convened to brainstorm strategies that might restore what they refer to as “intellectual vitality” at Harvard. Central to their mission is the idea that a vibrant academic environment must embrace dissenting opinions and foster respectful discourse.

Some members have expressed the importance of creating spaces where intellectual exploration is not only possible but encouraged and of seeking ways to “reencourage disagreement and look for healthier forms of disagreement” instead of letting discourse devolve into bitter and disparaging exchanges on email or social media.

Some members also want to explore possible changes to the admissions process, orientation programming, and writing curriculum as part of a broader strategy to align norms and processes with Harvard’s commitment to the open and rigorous pursuit of truth and academic inquiry.

5. The Radcliffe Institute’s Academic Freedom Initiative

Also in 2023, Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study launched its Academic Freedom and Connecting Across Difference initiative. The initiative's goals include:

• Examining evolving views of academic freedom
• Exploring how Harvard’s governance model, institutional culture, public responsibilities, and pursuit of research and learning align with constructive forms of academic freedom and inclusion
• Developing and modeling enduring ways to foster respectful and constructive dialogue despite disagreement

This still young initiative has sought to create forums for moderated dialogue and discussion with diverse Harvard leaders and faculty, through podcasts, and more. In 2024, for example, hosted speakers will explore questions about modern Jewish and modern Arab/Muslim identity in the context of university life at Harvard, across the US, and in the context of Middle East conflicts abroad.

Putting Harvard Into Perspective For Prospective Students

From cross-cutting political pressures and polarization to Harvard’s own elitism and detachment from its foundational educational mission and public commitments, many factors have thrust concerns over academic freedom at Harvard into the public spotlight and have raised alarms within the Harvard community as well.

At the same time, Harvard’s legacy of academic renown and value still give the school enduring value for many students hoping to get into Harvard, both in the US and abroad.

If, however, as Yale history professor David W. Blight has recently said, this is a moment of historical reckoning for Yale and other Ivy League institutions, it certainly makes sense to look at Harvard’s prestige through a critical lens as well, especially if you’re deciding whether to apply to or attend Harvard.

With a campus community in turmoil, concerns about the state of free speech and academic freedom, and other critical issues in the foreground — including concerns about ever-rising tuition rates, or evidence of rampant grade inflation — students aspiring to apply to or attend Harvard have a lot to consider.

But a broad perspective remains crucial.

Even with many critical issues at hand, Harvard undeniably offers exceptional value, in light of the caliber of students and teaching scholars it attracts from around the US and the world, and thanks to its enduring renown and reputation in the business world, in government, law, and beyond. And, with respect to academic freedom, the Harvard community is clearly actively engaged in addressing these concerns head on — something that prospective students or applicants also need to factor in.

At Crimson Education we believe that Harvard, holistically, is an outstanding institution, but also don’t deny that it’s prominence has been tarnished of late. We also hold to the larger belief that the “right” school and “best” school for you depends on your own educational goals, values, preferences, and aspirations.

This is why, wherever you apply, our strategists are committed to using a team approach to deliver personalized support wherever you might be on your college journey. If that sounds like the right approach for you, it’s easy to schedule a free feedback session to learn more. Our strategists will definitely enjoy discussing your aspirations and challenges and will do their best to answer any questions you have!