News & Events
Events
The Council runs a series of events for faculty. Please consider joining us to be added to our invitation list. Some of our past events, speakers, and themes include:
May 28th, 2026: Oliver Hobert (Columbia University) and David Pozen (Columbia Law School). The Provost Committee on Academic Freedom: Findings and Recommendations
May 5th, 2026: Musa al-Gharbi (Stonybrook University). The Language of Wokeness: Social Justice and the Righteous Regulation of Speech
April 16th, 2026: David Schizer (Columbia Law School) and Magda Schaler-Haynes (CUIMC). The Tangled Nexus of Antisemitism
September 13th, 2025: Inaugural Columbia Academic Freedom Conference
June 5th, 2025: Azim Shariff (University of British Columbia). Diversity for What? Should It Matter for Faculty Hiring?
May 1st, 2025: Roland Fryer (Harvard University)
April 24th, 2025: Katha Pollitt (Writer). Free Speech and the Cultural Left
April 3rd, 2025: Randall Kennedy (Harvard Law School)
February 6th, 2025: Jamie Kirchick (Journalist)
November 20th, 2024: Carole Hooven (Harvard University)
September 25th, 2024: David Rabban (Texas School of Law)
March 14th, 2024: Steven Pinker (Harvard University). The Growing Movement for Academic Freedom in American Higher Education
Latest News
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“Plenty of faculty—both at Harvard and at other elite universities that have recently seen their reputations trashed—insist that hard-right Republicans and other rabble-rousers are fabricating controversies. Stirring up animosity towards pointy-headed elites can win them political advantage. But thoughtful insiders acknowledge that, for some years, elite universities, particularly those within the Ivy League, have grown dangerously detached from ordinary Americans, not to mention unmoored from their own academic and meritocratic values.
In theory, these difficulties could promote efforts to correct flaws that are holding back elite education in America. But it could also entrench them. “America’s great universities are losing the public’s trust,” warns Robert George, a legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton. “And it is not the public’s fault.”
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The New York Times, February 16, 2024
“At Columbia, leaders of the Columbia Academic Freedom Council, a faculty group formed last month, emphasize in an interview that they were not a right-wing or a left-wing group. “We want to occupy the center,” said James Applegate, an astrophysicist.”
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Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 2024
“Amid a polarized political climate and debates about the war in Gaza and hot-button social issues like abortion rights, university leaders’ statements about current events have attracted attention and scrutiny. A small but growing number of institutions are responding to the pressure by swearing off such statements altogether.”
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Columbia Spectator, January 18, 2024
The council’s “Statement of Responsibilities”—named “in recognition of our faculty’s need to assume them,” according to the council’s website—outlines six responsibilities: to “protect academic freedom,” “uphold tolerance and respect,” “encourage civil discourse,” and maintain “institutional neutrality,” “external awareness,” and “responsibility to the institution.”
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Office of the President, January 18, 2024
“She served on the Committee on Freedom of Expression that developed the “Chicago Principles” in 2014.”
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Office of the President, January 17, 2024
“Access to diverse perspectives will be a fundamental aspect of our identity and we will build resilience to intellectual discomfort and challenge.”
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New York Times, December 28, 2023
“While she is known for her support of diversity initiatives, Dr. Shafik’s views on politics — and the way her personal experiences may have influenced them — can be hard to decipher. Mr. Mendelson said that as Columbia scrutinized her before she became president, the search committee was impressed that she had been “meticulously nonpartisan” in her previous job.
“One couldn’t figure out her personal views because she wanted that evenness on campus,” he said. “That’s one of the key reasons I was supportive of her candidacy for president.”
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Office of the President, December 20, 2023
“We want everyone to be able to engage with differing perspectives and to navigate the discomfort that comes with that. Our differences should be a source of strength, a critical part of what makes university communities like ours excel as incubators of knowledge and innovation.”