Academic Freedom at the Crossroads in the United States

Writing in International Higher Education, Louis M. Benedict's is one of three related articles in the Fall 2009 issue:

Despite the fact that the First Amendment applies only to public institutions, academic freedom has been widely espoused as a highly protected value of academia in almost all universities in the United States. In private universities, academic freedom protection is usually stated in a faculty contract or in university policy . . . In recent years a deterioration of academic freedom has occurred in higher education institutions in the United States. Exacerbating this trend is that US courts, longstanding protectors of the value of free speech, have whittled away some of the traditional academic freedom protection afforded to faculty at public colleges and universities. Several factors have contributed to a general decline in protection of academic freedom. These factors threaten the future viability of academic freedom and the advantages to higher education and society.