Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He will join Salem Center Senior Scholar Richard Lowery for a discussion on Academic Freedom.
High profile incidents of campus illiberalism are often brushed off as spirited exceptions to the rule that academic freedom is safe. Examples include the mob violence directed against Charles Murray at Middlebury College and Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State University. Progressive critics view the free speech debate–on campus and more generally–as overblown, a moral panic concocted by the right. I explore large-scale survey data on faculty and graduate students in the US, Canada, and the UK. Its unique contribution is providing robust quantitative analysis that reveals the nature and extent of punishment for speech and political discrimination. These effects are not specific to academics or students, but reflect general societal patterns that are magnified on campus due to its ideological composition.