If academic freedom trumps the freedom to protest, democracy dies
“Different political movements have seen protest and academic freedom as opposed or complementary. The 1960s student movements demanded and enacted a ‘wider type of freedom’ through studying, deliberating and protesting that opened higher education to people of color, women and other marginalized people. The AAUP frames the freedoms of academics to teach, research and engage in public speech as interrelated with freedoms for students. In the classroom, a professor’s academic freedom is meant to secure their conditions for teaching in ways that facilitate students’ freedoms to learn, experiment and develop capacities for democratic participation, including protest.”