Many Faculty Say Academic Freedom Is Deteriorating. They’re Self-Censoring.

Nearly 60 percent of the roughly 1,100 respondents to an Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey—conducted in the lead-up to last week’s election—strongly agreed that academic freedom in higher education is under threat. Throw in those who say they somewhat agree it’s under threat, and the share grows to 91 percent.

More than 40 percent said their sense of academic freedom in teaching declined over the last year, and more than 20 percent said the same about academic freedom in research.

But their perception of liberty outside classrooms and scholarship—in the realm of so-called extramural speech, such as on social media—was worse still. Half of all respondents noted a decrease in their sense of academic freedom regarding extramural speech.

The feeling that it has become riskier to speak freely has led many faculty to censor themselves. Nearly half of respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that they were refraining from extramural speech due to the situation on their own campus and/or the broader political environment. More than a third said they weren’t communicating with students in or out of class about things they previously might have. And 15 percent said they’re not researching or publishing on topics they otherwise would have.

The email survey, conducted Sept. 16 to Oct. 4, has a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, numerous faculty members have faced backlash from the public—and even their own institutions—for online posts about Israel and Palestine. Controversial faculty speech and writing about the conflict became part of the national political debate leading up to the election. Now, the U.S. tradition of academic freedom will enter an even more uncertain future when Republicans retake the White House and likely both chambers of Congress.

“With an administration coming in that has vowed to dismantle the Department of Education as well as go after higher education, when JD Vance says that professors are his enemies, you know we have a lot to worry about,” said Joan Scott, a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

The debate within higher education about what kinds of faculty expression should and shouldn’t be protected under the umbrella of academic freedom goes back at least a century. But contemporary Republicans—from state legislatures to Washington—have shown a willingness to publicly condemn faculty speech. Lawmakers in a few red states have passed legislation in recent years to restrict faculty expression, even as conservative faculty have complained that their own views aren’t welcome on campus.

Faculty self-censorship doesn’t suppress discussion of all topics equally; survey respondents expressed particular hesitancy to talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Getting Out of the Middle East

Inside Higher Ed and Hanover asked the faculty who had said their sense of academic freedom declined in teaching, research or extramural speech which particular topics they felt less free to discuss. The top three responses, out of roughly a dozen options, were the Israel-Palestine conflict; diversity, equity and inclusion; and federal politics writ large.

The results echo other recent polls. About 70 percent of faculty who responded to a survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said it was difficult to have open and honest conversations about the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to Nathan Honeycutt, a research fellow at FIRE. (The full survey results are forthcoming.) And a more targeted survey of Middle East and North Africa scholars conducted by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll and George Washington University’s Project on Middle East Political Science found that three-quarters of respondents said they felt “the need to self-censor when speaking about the Palestinian-Israeli issue in an academic or professional capacity.”

The new Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey also details how demographics, political affiliation and geographic region affect respondents’ perceptions of threats to their academic freedom. For instance, respondents at colleges and universities in the Northeast and West were more inclined to say they felt less free than a year ago to discuss the Middle East conflict than did faculty in the Midwest and South.

Jeff Reger, executive director of the Middle East Studies Association, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that his scholarly association has received a grant to study in depth the state of speech and scholarship regarding Israel and Palestine. “We will be doing substantial research over the next two years on this topic,” Reger said.

He provided a news release from last month saying that the new Academic Freedom Initiative is intended to “create a public database recording the range of experiences of faculty, staff and students since Oct. 7, 2023.” The initiative will also seek, among other things, to track changes “affecting academic speech at the state and federal levels.”

Academic Freedom for Me, Not for Thee?

Over all, more than a third of the respondents to the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey said they don’t think that faculty of all political persuasions at their institution enjoy the same level of academic freedom or free expression. Another 22 percent said they were unsure whether such equality existed.

Political affiliation appears to impact the perception of equal treatment. Over half of Republican survey respondents—who made up only 74 of the roughly 1,100 faculty who answered the question—said they don’t believe academic freedom is equal for everyone along the political spectrum; only 30 percent of the Democrats said the same.

Honeycutt said the forthcoming FIRE survey found that “conservative faculty are much more concerned about damaging their reputation or losing their jobs than liberal faculty.” It seems like a situation of “academic freedom for thee, but not for me,” he said.

But Scott, the AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure member, said she thinks academic freedom protects Republican faculty. Their exercise of free speech rights doesn’t “always get them the results that they want,” she said, but “that’s how democracy works.”

Scott said that “right now, the people who are most under attack” on campuses are those who have taken pro-Palestinian positions or are protesting what she called the “war on Gaza,” adding, “I think that is what has aggravated the situation [with academic freedom] dramatically.”

The Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey allowed additional open responses on some questions, including whether academic freedom is equal across the political spectrum. “Anyone who is not a hard-left progressive is openly mocked and derided by supervisors, during training events by outside consultants and by some particularly outspoken faculty members,” one faculty member wrote. “Anyone who does not immediately denounce Trump, Republicans or anything right of Libertarian whenever the topic is brought up in a meeting is hissed at.”

But another respondent wrote, “In the current political climate, conservative white profs have more freedom.” Another wrote that “Jewish (Zionist or not) and pro-Israel faculty members are intimidated, disrespected, silenced and marginalized.”

“I would hope that faculty just get more confident and rally around, kind of like NATO,” Honeycutt said. “An attack on one faculty is an attack on all.”

A higher percentage of faculty in the South than in other geographic regions said they felt less free than they did a year ago to discuss DEI or abortion. Legislatures in the South, including in Florida and Texas, have passed laws targeting higher education diversity efforts and restricting abortion access.

In another concern for the South, a larger share of respondents there than in any other region said their general sense of academic freedom had significantly declined. This was true whether respondents were asked about teaching, research or extramural speech.

When it comes to faculty members’ self-censorship, women’s speech appears more chilled than men’s. A greater share of women than men said they refrained from making extramural statements (50 percent compared to 45 percent) and communicating with students on certain topics (38 percent compared to 32 percent); only in research and publishing did respondents from the two sexes self-censor at roughly equal rates.

Faculty also had vastly different perceptions of the state of academic freedom on their own campus versus across higher education broadly. While 60 percent of respondents strongly agreed that academic freedom was under threat within academe as a whole, only 18 percent strongly agreed that was the case on their own campus. (Among faculty in the South, 25 percent said it was under threat at their own institution.)

“It makes me wonder why,” Honeycutt said of the disparity between respondents’ local and general perceptions of academic freedom threats. “Is it the classic kind of ‘Well, this is a problem, but it’s not a problem here’?”