Voices: I’m a professor. Censorship is threatening academic freedom.

I’ve been a college professor in Utah for 13 years. I am told by the Weber State University administration, almost weekly, that my academic freedom is fully protected. But given a recent controversy over free expression at WSU, that guarantee begs the question: If my academic freedom is so well-protected, why must administrators keep assuring me that it is well-protected? My experience shows that academic freedom is slowly being eroded until a career in higher education is becoming little more than delivering conservative talking points.

At its core, academic freedom is about liberty to research and teach in line with disciplinary norms. That dry statement, however, does not do the concept justice. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in 1952: “To regard teachers … as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion.”

Democracy requires people who are prepared to engage with the world and universities provide important training for that engagement.

I am a scholar of censorship in the United States over the past century. I study the reasons why material is targeted by censors, the strategic campaigns fought, and how law and politics interact to resolve such disputes. Imagine my surprise when two days before the start of a conference on censorship my university administration stated that participants at the conference are not to “describe legislation or policies in ways that take a side, such as labeling them ‘harmful’ or attributing them to a partisan ‘strategy.’ ”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. I am a political scientist whose career has been built on understanding the political and ideological underpinnings of censorship. Yet I was told not to talk about politics. I suppose I was to pretend that censorship simply emerges from the ether, that no one argues for it or implements it. This was a line too far for me. I quit the conference, which was ultimately canceled. The organizers had put tremendous effort into presenting a great event for the university and general community. It was a disappointment for all involved.

Why is my employer — and increasingly, many other colleges and universities nationwide — making such absurd demands of their faculties and staff? The only explanation I can offer is the driving force behind most censorship: fear. Usually, censors fear the effect of some idea on recipients. For example, that learning about other religions will undermine students’ faith in (their parents’ version of) God. That reading a book about sex will cause them to have sex. Or that playing violent video games will turn them into school shooters. Censors fear that ideas have consequences and rather than rebut those ideas, they see it as more desirable to simply try and stamp them out.

What might be said in a censorship conference that could strike fear into the administration? Pretty much anything that could anger Republican legislators — who will then attack the university. For example, I would certainly have said something like “today censorship is driven overwhelmingly by conservative Republicans bent on turning public institutions into mouthpieces for conservative ideology.” This statement is true and backed up by years of research. I’m told my academic freedom to research and publish on this topic is fully protected. I’m just never allowed to make this statement on campus in the public eye, because a state legislator may object to it.

Sadly, this is the new reality of academic freedom. Faculty members are assured we are allowed to teach and research freely while simultaneously being told not to make waves or make anyone mad at us. After all, the Utah Legislature just finished exacting a 10-percent budget cut dressed up by language about “efficiency” that was driven by a desire to cut programs unpopular with many conservatives. This leaves a university with not only fewer resources to meet the educational mission of the institution, but also one with a faculty increasingly cowed into silence.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren warned us about this danger in 1957. “Scholarship,” he wrote, “cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”

But my academic freedom is intact. Or so say the administrators who demand that I censor what I say in public.

Richard Price is the College of Social Sciences and Education Endowed Professor of Political Science at Weber State University. The views expressed here are their own and do not represent the opinions of Weber State University.

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