Opinion > Opinions - Education The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill When universities punish faculty speech, everyone loses by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman, opinion contributors - 03/15/26 8:00 AM ET by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman, opinion contributors - 03/15/26 8:00 AM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email Getty Images Higher education is facing an epidemic of faculty censorship.  Last September, Texas A&M University fired lecturer Melissa McCoul  for discussing gender identity during a class on children’s literature — a decision an appeals panel later found “not justified.” The next day, Texas State University terminated tenured historian Thomas Alter  for remarks he made at a conference on “Revolutionary Socialism.” In November, following a complaint by Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Indiana University suspended Jessica Adams , a lecturer in the School of Social Work. Adams showed her class on “Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice” a widely used graphic with several dozen statements, including “Make America Great Again,” intended to illustrate them as overt or covert expressions of white supremacism. In January, Texas A&M told philosophy professor Martin Peterson he could not teach writings by Plato  that touched on “race and gender ideology.” Hunter College placed biology professor Allyson Friedman on leave for appearing to suggest, during a community education council meeting, that Black students were “too dumb to know they’re in a bad school.”  These cases illustrate a dangerous trend. Under pressure from conservative activists, the federal government, red state legislatures and sometimes their own boards, universities are increasingly willing to suppress faculty speech. According to the Foundation on Individual Rights and Expression, “ more scholars  have been punished for their speech  in the last few years than during the entire Red Scare.” U.S. law does not codify academic freedom or even clearly define it. The Supreme Court has described it “as a special concern of the First Amendment,” but in this area, as one free speech expert put it, the law is “ frustratingly inconsistent and confusing .” There is little agreement about academic freedom’s scope, its legal basis, who qualifies for protection, or whether it applies to off-campus speech or speech outside a professor’s area of scholarly expertise. In their new book, “ Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times ,” Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and University of California-Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman offer a clear and compelling framework for understanding what academic freedom protects and how it differs from free speech. “Expressive activity on campuses,” they note, “takes place in two separate ‘zones,’ professional and nonprofessional.” In classrooms and labs, professors’ “actions are governed not by general free speech norms, but by the protections and obligations of academic freedom.” When faculty speak “outside these professional settings,” and especially when they address matters outside their disciplines, “ordinary rules of free speech typically apply.”  The difference is crucial and often misunderstood. Academic freedom grants professors “tremendous discretion” to discover and transmit knowledge — to research and teach — subject to the norms of their discipline and the judgment of their peers. That freedom has helped make America’s universities the envy of the world.  It comes, however, with a price: When acting in their professional capacity, faculty must adhere to “high standards of professional competence and ethics.” Thus, “a European history professor who teaches students that the Holocaust never happened could face institutional consequences,” whereas a member of the public making the same claim need not fear any such sanction. This explains why Hunter College was wrong to discipline Allyson Friedman. She was not speaking in a professional setting or in her professional capacity. Her remarks, however offensive, amounted to speech protected under the First Amendment. Texas A&M was likewise wrong to fire Melissa McCoul and warn Martin Peterson against teaching Plato. Both were exercising their professional judgment in the classroom, as was Jessica Adams. Academic freedom protects their choices because society has long recognized that “colleges and universities will do a better job” of creating and disseminating knowledge if what is studied and taught “is determined not by governing bodies, administrators, or politicians but by e