Free Speech and Civil Liberties

Free Speech and Liberal Education: A Plea for Intellectual Diversity and Tolerance dissects the nature, extent, and causes of the speech suppression that exists, emphasizing the need for intellectual diversity and how repression often co​exists with counter​forces that need to be energized and mobilized in what author Donald Alexander Downs portrays as the “embattled” status of academic free speech; the character of the harms that the new policies and actions pose to liberal education; broader “structural and societal threats” to academic freedom; how to mobilize to protect campus freedom using resources inside and outside the campus; and most importantly, why robust free speech and academic freedom are so important to both liberal education and the prospects of liberal democracy.