To the Editor:
Universities today face the challenge of defending the beleaguered ideal of academic freedom at a time of unprecedented protests that often shade into intimidation and coercion. The Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard (CAFH), on whose executive committee we sit, has grappled with the complex issues surrounding academic freedom, but the results have displeased our colleague Ryan Enos, who resigned from the Council a year ago and explains why in “How Free Speech Failed at Harvard — and How to Rescue It” (The Chronicle Review, September 27). We wish to correct a series of misconceptions.
Enos asserts that, despite its avowed dedication to free speech, CAFH and its leaders chose not to defend free speech at Harvard at critical moments after October 7, 2023. He has four grievances. One was CAFH’s decision not to issue as its first statement a condemnation of the external actors who crudely publicized members of the Harvard Palestinian Solidarity Committee that had blamed Israel “entirely” for the massacre. A second was an open letter on October 8 to the Harvard leadership, co-written by the two of us and four others and signed by over Harvard 400 faculty (most of them not CAFH members), clarifying that the students’ statement did not reflect the views of the Harvard community, and why we in particular rejected it. The third was an op-ed we wrote in the Harvard Crimson, responding to one that Enos had co-authored, in which we disputed his claim that our strongly expressed disagreement with the students conflicted with their academic freedom. The fourth was an op-ed the two of us wrote in the Boston Globe (as individuals independent of CAFH), which argued that a decision by Harvard administration to end the campus encampment would not violate principles of academic freedom.
Enos may not agree with these acts, but each was carefully reasoned. The events of October 7 evoked an explosion of diverse opinions on our unmoderated listserv (suitably enough in a forum on academic freedom), and there was insufficient consensus to issue a statement, which our bylaws make difficult.
The open faculty letter, written at a time when university leaders often issued statements about current events, called on them to do so then, when all of Harvard was being tainted by the inflammatory statement from the student groups. We are strong advocates of consistent policy, so we soon followed by arguing for a new policy of institutional neutrality which would preclude most such statements, though exceptions are allowed for issues that directly affect the university (as that one did).
The title of our Crimson op-ed captures its argument: “Academic Freedom Prohibits Censorship and Punishment, Not Judgment.” Contra Enos, we defended the free speech rights of the students in question, but did not consider it to be “public shaming” to treat them as adults and refute their claims.
Our Globe op-ed noted that even the most expansive policies on free speech (such as those expressed in First Amendment jurisprudence) allow circumscribed exceptions such as coercion, harassment, hecklers’ vetoes, consistency with the university’s educational objectives, and reasonable restrictions on time, place, and manner. Those restrictions must themselves be justified with the three-part test of viewpoint-neutrality, defensible institutional purpose, and existence of alternative opportunities for expression.
We agree with Enos that speech must be protected even when we find it offensive, and that in ambiguous situations we should err on the side of freedom. These are core values of CAFH , a young organization that, as Enos implores, strives for content-neutral decisions. As it happens, our official actions have included protecting the speech of anti-Israel speakers (contrary to the bias that Enos alleges), though we have faced the factual complication that the hardest cases, like aggressive disruptions and expropriations of the university commons, have all come from the anti-Israel faction.
We are proud of CAFH’s accomplishments and would be delighted if Professor Enos would rejoin our effort to work through the nuanced issues surrounding academic freedom in a principled way.
Jeffrey Flier
Professor of medicine and former dean
Harvard Medical School
Steven Pinker
Professor of psychology
Harvard University
