The ever-intensifying political polarization between “liberals” and “conservatives” (in the American senses of those terms) have occluded a clear understanding both of the nature and the importance of academic freedom. While some egregious and indefensible mobbing attacks on academics like Kathleen Stock (who had the audacity to argue that sex is biological reality that has important health and political implications for women’s lives- quelle horreur!) or the firing of Frances Widdowson by Mount Royal University in Calgary (because she questioned the dominant narrative around residential schools and the influence of Indigenous traditions on Canadian university campuses) provide grist for the conservative mill that universities have been captured by woke cry babies incapable of argument, the reality is that conservatives are a far bigger threat to academic freedom.

If anyone doubts this claim then they are not paying attention to news out of Florida. Governor de Santis has launched a full scale attack on the intellectual autonomy of Florida universities. His warm up exercise was to fire the entire board of the small liberal arts focused New College of Florida and replace it with Christopher Rufo as Chair and hand picked Republican supporters. The new Board, under the guise, of course, of political neutrality and academic rigour, threatened to fire professors and eliminate programs that adopted a critical perspective on contemporary American reality. This move came after he forced the closure of an accelerated program on racial history on grounds that it teaches (generally undefined, by its opponents) Critical Race Theory. The new Bill before the Florida legislature threatens to go much further:

“The legislation, filed this week, would also require that general education courses at state colleges and universities “promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic” and cannot define American history “as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” It would prohibit general courses “with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.”

The American Association of University Professors is right to warn that if passed, the very existence of Florida universities as centres for free inquiry and argument would be threatened. If taken at its word, the last set of provisions would lead to a ban on string theory and other scientific theories “based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.” It would also rule out courses in art and creative writing that demand students go beyond established canons of practice, because by definition, going beyond established canons of practice is “exploratory.” Indeed, what living tradition of thought, scientific, humanistic, artistic, or social scientific is not exploratory at its leading edges? And if universities are not exploratory at their leading edges, they serve little purpose.

In any discipline, one studies its past in order to go beyond it. History does not simply transmit facts about the past. Historical research uncovers new documents, gives voice to excluded perspectives, and re-interprets settled interpretations in light of the continued effects past events and ideas have on the present. De Santis’s bill, aimed as it obviously is at what he takes to be left-wing biased research, would quite literally destroy Florida universities. They would become mere transmission belts of hackneyed republican interpretations of American history that no serious student of that country of whatever political persuasion could accept. One might argue that the constitutional norms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution establish a sufficient political foundation for solving the problem of racism, but how could anyone who impartially examined the evidence disagree with the basic argument of Critical Race Theory: America was shaped by the slave economy and its effects are felt in the structure and operation of every American institution and the daily reality of African Americans still today?

Perhaps someone would disagree with that reading of the evidence. Excellent. If they have a better interpretation, they should be encouraged to share it. And then defenders of Critical Race Theory can respond. What cannot happen without destroying the university system is for state power to rule one side of the debate illegal and ban it. No one on the left that I know of is proposing that left-wing state legislatures ban the teaching of classical liberal doctrines of formal equality or making courses that argue that America gave the purest expression of those principles illegal.

There have indeed been overzealous demonstrations by students and faculty that have prevented right-wing speakers from speaking. Demonstrations and counter-argument are one thing, preventing speakers from speaking is another. The Stock and Mount Royal cases are more serious because they resulted in the two academics losing their positions. These are egregious violations of collegiality and academic freedom that not only threaten the intellectual integrity of the university but provide ammunition for the right wing. We can be certain that de Santis’s frontal assault on the independence of universities will be replicated elsewhere. And if the Republicans are elected in 2024, perhaps with de Santis as leader, maybe with trump. watch out.

But does my argument not depend on a naive belief in the political neutrality of knowledge and universities? No, it does not. I have a sound understanding of the history of Western universities in general and the role that ideological justification of the status quo (first the hegemony of the Catholic Church in medieval society, then various imperialist projects and capitalist modernization) have played in their development. Major American universities would not have the wealth that they enjoy if they were not the recipients of massive amounts of military funding. Universities are integral parts of the knowledge economy, which is an integral part of capitalist society, which remains contradictory in all the ways past generations of critics have noted.

Universities are also contradictory institutions. Since the nineteenth century they have been an essential component of national development strategies, but they have also provided space for the critique, from a variety of perspectives, of those development strategies. In the 1960’s the (now mostly anachronistic) image of the campus radical professor emerged in a context where students were leading the movements against imperialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the soullessness of a future dominated by stratified corporations and the ‘company men’ who ran them.

That critical function of universities is as essential to their history as their function in preparing the next generation of national leaders. Without academic freedom, universities would not have been able to play that role. However, like every right, it cuts both ways: it protects the rights of radical critics to freely articulate their criticisms, but it also protects the right of critics of radicals to criticize in turn.

Academic freedom is thus not essentially a principle of radical criticism or a conservative tool to “repressively tolerate” critique within polite limits. It is a principle that has developed to allow the contemporary university to exist as a space for free intellectual inquiry into anything that can become the object of intellectual inquiry, including the past histories of the various disciplines, the exclusions that have shaped them, and the limited range of voices formerly allowed to speak. Universities are not indoctrination zones for any political perspective. At their best, universities enable students to learn to think critically and independently, to compile and assess evidence, to test principles for coherence and consistency, and to reason, analytically and critically, about the operation of major social institutions and the value systems that guide them (as well as imagine alternative value systems that might guide them in a different future).

Education is not about learning how to mindlessly chant slogans, whether from the left or right. As Marx argued, the question of objective truth independently of human action is a scholastic question: in practice, human beings must prove the truth. But if they are going to prove the truth (whether in physics or philosophy) they have to be able to think: gather evidence, draw inferences, expose contradictions, propose novel syntheses. Learning to think also involves– and this point proves painful for dogmatist of the right and left– to accept that other people think differently. The university provides a space in which those disagreements can be solved rationally, through open debate and comparison of arguments pro and contra. Peoples feelings simply cannot get in the way of this exchange. Education is a not a safe space: it is a conflictual space in which different positions confront one another and accepted truths of any sort contested.

Argument is hard. Listening to counter-arguments that cut against values that define your commitments is painful. De Santis’s bill shows us how not to deal with the problem. Making a theoretical position illegal does not make it go away, as he would hope, but it does destroy the integrity of institutions that are vital for any contemporary society, however one believes that it should be run. But shouting down a person with whom you disagree does not make their position go away either. More likely, it strengthens it because it allows conservative politicians to argue that there is nothing backing up critical perspectives other than shrill, irrational moralism. Since the right tends to be far more ruthless when it wins state power than the left (compare Margaret Thatcher to Jeremy Corbin, Trump to Biden) the left has a pragmatic reason to protect academic freedom. But beneath that pragmatic, must lie a deeper commitment to the belief that the truth will out. If our theories are ultimately the more truthful, then we need to develop them through through open inquiry alongside competing theories and “prove their truth in practice” through and sharp but peaceful argument with our opponents.