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It's Time for Progressives to Recommit to Academic Freedom

The same justifications we’ve used to restrict conservative speech are being used to silence us on Palestine. We need a different approach.

Pomona College President David Oxtoby denounced the disruption as an affront to “the discovery of truth, the collaborative development of knowledge and the betterment of society.” My classmates objected: Mac Donald had not come to debate “mere difference of opinion,” some of them wrote in an open letter, “but the right of Black people to exist.” When the University of Southern California canceled its commencement speaker for being critical of Israel, the school cited its “legal obligation” to “protect students and keep our campus community safe.” USC invoked the same justification to call the LAPD in riot gear to stop a day of yoga, kite-making, and Kaddish reading. I think there is only one meaningful answer, which the board hinted at in a letter it sent to editors of the journal to excuse the publication delay: “Whatever your views of this piece, it will clearly be controversial and potentially have an impact on all associated with the Review.” As Koppelman remarked in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “That sounds a lot like a claim that the full membership ought to have had the opportunity to capitulate to anticipated pressure.”

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