When the University of Chicago launched the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression in 2023, President Paul Alivisatos said it would be a place where “free expression genuinely serves the seeking of truths, through listening as well as sharing our own ideas.”
As part of its mission, the Chicago Forum created the Academic Freedom Institute, an annual event which invites administrators and academics to learn about topics related to free expression and academic freedom. The Chicago Forum recently hosted 56 attendees from across the country to UChicago to discuss these complex topics from their experiences at college and university campuses—and draw lessons from UChicago’s history of defending and upholding these important academic principles.
During the three-day gathering, participants heard from leaders from across the country as well as UChicago. They examined subjects such as the boundaries of academic freedom, institutional neutrality, current threats and actions against free expression, and cultivating a vibrant student culture of free expression.
“To have the chance to meet with people who are not just practitioners and working in universities across the country, but people from the University of Chicago, who are the established experts in this field and helped build this field, to get their take on some of the things we’re dealing with, was really helpful,” said Eric Johnson, senior advisor at the University of North Carolina System.
Attendees said they appreciated the opportunity to exchange diverse viewpoints openly.
“The community cultivated by the institute fostered open dialogue, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and civility,” said Belinda Higgs Hyppolite, vice president in the Division of Access and Opportunity at the University of Oklahoma. “It created an environment where participants felt empowered to both challenge and support one another in productive and respectful ways.”
Leaders at the Chicago Forum said they were encouraged by the vigorous debate at this year’s gathering.
“People were really engaged with each other,” said Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the Chicago Forum and the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law, who spoke and moderated discussions at the event. “It was a good example of free expression and felt like we were living the principles we were trying to practice and promote.”
Leila Brammer, director of curriculum at the Chicago Forum and an organizer of the conference, said those kinds of conversations are the goal of the institute as well as the Chicago Forum. She also said the event was an important opportunity for the University to share its history of defending free expression and academic freedom.
“There is a sense of our role externally as a convener of conversations around these values that are at the very bedrock of our existence,” Brammer said, “and we take that role and mission seriously when we think about what we can offer externally to our colleagues across the country.”
The ‘struggle’ of free expression
The Academic Freedom Institute is a key initiative of the Chicago Forum’s mission to promote open discourse, building on UChicago’s core principles of free speech and academic freedom. Teams from participating universities and colleges create a self-report on structures for academic freedom at their campus, and develop plans for implementation after the workshop concludes.
Alivisatos opened the event by discussing UChicago’s longstanding commitment to free expression, which he traced to the founding of the University and William Rainey Harper, its first president. He talked about ongoing challenges in free expression, which he called a “good struggle” that is at the essence of colleges and universities.
Subsequent sessions explored issues around institutional neutrality and UChicago’s landmark 1967 Kalven Report; as well as the Chicago Principles on Free Expression, created in 2014 in response to attempts to limit free speech on campuses across the U.S.
One of the more wide-ranging discussions included Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at UChicago; and Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York University School of Law and senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The two discussed what Stone called the “extraordinarily ambiguous” wording of the First Amendment, how free speech and freedom of the press evolved over centuries, especially through landmark Supreme Court cases in the 1960s and ‘70s, as well as more recent assaults on academic freedom and free speech.
For participant Sonja Wentling, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of history at Concordia College in Minnesota, the conference helped her appreciate the dedication an institution must have to free expression.
“Pronouncements alone will not protect or advance free inquiry and expression,” she said. “Those principles have to be rooted in a campus culture that actively sustains, models, and engages in robust conversation, and that requires an ongoing commitment.”
