Heterodox Academy

🎓 Which experience did you have more of in university: viewpoint diversity or echo chambers?

🚨 The U.S. is seeing more attempts to use the powers of government to ban specific subjects from classrooms. But classroom bans risk turning professors into thought-police. New from HxA's Alice Dreger. #AcademicFreedom #EducationReform #FreeSpeech #HigherEducation

🗣️ You heard him: academia needs you. The freedom to question and debate is fragile, but truth and knowledge depend on it. #AcademicFreedom #FreeSpeech #EducationReform #EducationQuotes

🚨 America’s academic freedom ranking keeps falling. This year’s Academic Freedom Index report shows the U.S. ranks #85, just making the top 40% of all countries included—after another continuous year of significant decline. But why? New from HxA's Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D.. #AcademicFreedom #EducationReform #FreeSpeech #HigherEducation

Enforcing gender ideology has led to censorship in science. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss recounts instances where ideology was put before truth and open inquiry. #AcademicFreedom #FreeSpeech #DEI #EducationReform

🎓Can we preserve academic freedom AND get rid of DEI statements? Abigail Thompson and John Wilson discussed this potential conflict at the recent Censorship in the Sciences conference. #AcademicFreedom #DEI #EducationReform #FreeSpeech #HigherEducation

🧠 Viewpoint diversity is the best medicine for echo chambers.

Open inquiry on our nation's campuses is being critically compromised. Today, Joe Cohn and I published a piece for Heterodox Academy outlining how the chaotic actions taken against universities are undermining open inquiry. https://lnkd.in/g-kYFCDn These actions have narrowed inquiry in research, threatened expression with sanctions, and incentivized political compliance. The chill is pervasive. In just the past two months, we have witnessed: - The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia ask for DEI ideas to be "swiftly removed" from classrooms - The U.S. Department of Education's Dear Colleague Letter threatening institutions with deep funding cuts. - Countless funding freezes, cuts, and censorship leaving research stalled and researchers on eggshells about how to continue work labeled as “woke” or “DEI” by the Trump administration - Universities removing words like “woman” from their websites in a preemptive, fear-driven move to avoid federal retaliation. - Academic collaborators with government scientists being ordered to withdraw papers that include disfavored words. - Researchers conducting medical research on cancer and asthma have been put on blast by the White House for “waste, fraud, and abuse” after administrative staff have misunderstood research terminology and study applications. - Organizations attempting to help researchers frame research "strategically" to avoid federal backlash. - Overly broad federal interference at Columbia. - Students and researchers being detained, deported, or blocked from entering the U.S. due to viewpoints misaligned with the Trump administration. Just yesterday, Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by masked, plain-clothes federal immigration agents and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana. And that's just what we included in this piece. This political environment is critically compromising the foundations of open inquiry on our campuses, both the actual freedom of inquiry and the reasonable feeling that one is free to inquire. As someone who has spent their life in education, and deeply values intellectual freedom and the ability to inquire freely, it is truly shocking to be witness to what is happening in #highered right now.

🎓 What does academia look like without viewpoint diversity? Firings for wrong-think and "unsafe" ideas. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss shares two examples. #AcademicFreedom #FreeSpeech #DEI #EducationReform

🚨 Recent political actions from the federal government suggest that the culture of open inquiry is being critically compromised on campuses around the country. The chill is pervasive. New from HxA's Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D. and Joe Cohn. #EducationReform #FreeSpeech #AcademicFreedom #DEI