Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus

The decline of respect for free speech, academic freedom, and civil liberty in American universities.

Donald Alexander Downs (Author)

9780521839877, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 December 2004

318 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.552 kg

"Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus, the product of considerable scholarship, is unequivocal in the positions it holds. Most of all, it is thought provoking and challenging. Agreement with all of Down's conclusions is neither important nor necessary, but this book needs to be read, discussed, and debated and, as a profession we need to be mindful of his perspective. It is a book that should find its way on the reading lists of those who in any way are engaged in the political, cultural, and social issues that so often frame campus life."
Journal of College Student Development

This book addresses a major problem in contemporary American higher education: deprivations of free speech, due process, and other basic civil liberties in the name of favored political causes. Downs begins by analyzing the nature and evolution of the problem, and discusses how these betrayals of liberty have harmed the truth seeking mission of universities. Rather than promoting equal respect and tolerance of diversity, policies restricting academic freedom and civil liberty have proved divisive, and have compromised the robust exchange of ideas that is a necessary condition of a meaningful education. Drawing on personal experience as well as research, Downs presents four case studies that illustrate the difference that conscientious political resistance and mobilization of faculty and students can make. Such movements have brought about unexpected success in renewing the principles of free speech, academic freedom, and civil liberty at universities where they have been active.

Part I. Introduction and Background: 1. The return of the proprietary university and the new politics of free speech and civil liberty
2. Background: the rise of anti-free speech and liberty ideologies
Part II. Case Studies in the Politics of Civil Liberty on Campus: 3. Columbia's sexual misconduct policy: civil liberty vs. solidarity
4. Berkeley and the rise of the anti-free speech movement
5. Undue process at Penn
6. Renewal: the rise of the free speech movement at Wisconsin
7. Abolition in the Wisconsin faculty senate and its aftermath
8. Some conclusions concerning civil liberty and political strategy.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]