Cornell’s Academic Freedom Test

By The Editorial Board

Wall Street Journal

04/04/2023 - 06:47 pm


Diversity enforcers have become speech enforcers on many college campuses, but a few schools are starting to articulate some limits. The latest is Cornell University, which has refused to adopt a student resolution that would have required “trigger warnings” anytime an upsetting subject is mentioned in the classroom.


Under the proposal, professors would have been required to warn students in advance about “traumatic” content that touched on topics like self-harm, domestic, racial or transphobic violence and homophobic harassment. Professors would have been even more nervous than they already are that any open-format classroom discussion or debate might wander into trigger territory.


The entire idea of a trigger warning for speech is antithetical to the idea of a university, and in a previous age no one would have taken it seriously. But this is the era of woke censorship, so it’s news when campus leaders push back, as they have at Cornell.


“Learning to engage with difficult and challenging ideas is a core part of a university education: essential to our students’ intellectual growth, and to their future ability to lead and thrive in a diverse society,” Cornell President Martha Pollack and Provost Michael Kotlikoff wrote in rejecting the resolution. Academic freedom, they note, means that professors get to choose their course content as well as how they present it to their students.


In recent weeks, Stanford University and Columbia University have had to tangle with students who felt triggered by exposure to conservative judges. Stanford law students shouted down federal Judge Kyle Duncan while Columbia students have called on the university to take down a social media post that includes members of the school’s Federalist Society meeting with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In both instances, the universities stood by policies protecting free expression on campus.


Cornell’s policy on free speech notes Cornell values “free and open inquiry and expression—tenets that underlie academic freedom—even of ideas some may consider wrong or offensive.” Research has shown that trigger warnings aren’t effective at helping people manage their anxiety, and including such warnings in an academic environment encourages emotional fragility and intellectual cowardice. It also teaches students and faculty to self-censor.


Cornell’s position is good news, but these bad ideas will recur as long as the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy governs academia, pushing the notion that honest speech and debate are traumatic. If universities want to reclaim real intellectual openness on campus, they have to help students get comfortable with being uncomfortable.


Cornell’s Academic Freedom Test - WSJ

Where Liberty and Learning Endure

June 29, 2026
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, we reflect on the enduring principles of liberty and learning that have defined Davidson College for nearly two centuries.

Bankruptcy and Higher Education

June 21, 2026
By Todd Zywicki The Wall Street Journal June 21, 2026 Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty. The board began seizing the university’s academic programs—including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials—at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president. The board’s assertion of authority mirrors incoming mandates by the Alabama Legislature restricting the role of faculty senates in the state’s public university system. Predictably, Auburn’s faculty has responded with howls of outrage, decrying these intrusions on the faculty’s authority over academic operations. How could outsiders appointed through a political process have the expertise to make such delicate decisions? I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment. Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction. Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals—such as doctors and lawyers—and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight. Faculties enjoyed substantial rights of self-governance because they committed to higher standards than those required by ordinary jobs. Professors would establish and maintain standards of scholarly integrity, freedom of speech and inquiry, and rigorous dedication to merit-based assessment of research in specialized areas. They policed their own house, enforcing norms of truth-seeking, maintaining scholarly integrity and rigor, and ensuring that students emerged with basic knowledge, employable skills and civic competency. But over the past several decades, commitment to those values collapsed. Surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently reveal fear among students and faculty around expressing unfashionable ideas. Universities have seen shout-downs, cancellations and even violence against speakers. Merit and quality yielded to “diversity” and “equity.” Truth-seeking has been displaced by faddish theories and ideologically charged teaching and research. Professors design esoteric departments and teach niche classes to cliques of activist students while the needs of other students and taxpayers for real education go unaddressed. Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission. At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry. Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you. Mr. Zywicki is a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was a Dartmouth College trustee, 2005-09. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bankruptcy-and-higher-education-4c2b178e

Race Preferences Are Falling Nationwide

June 19, 2026
By the Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal June 19, 2026 The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences is turning out to be a landmark with profound consequences as its influence spreads. On Thursday the famously progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a state program that issued scholarships based on race violates the U.S. Constitution. Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the court that the Constitution requires “that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,’” and that the state cannot “use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” That must have been painful for the activist liberal majority on the court. In a concurrence, Wisconsin Chief Justice Jill Karofsky took some shots at Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2023) before acknowledging that “I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA” and other Supreme Court rulings “when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.” The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty against a 1985 Badger State law that reserved need-based scholarships through a grant program for “Black American,” “American Indian,” “Hispanic” and some Southeast Asian undergraduate students enrolled in Wisconsin’s private and technical colleges. Last week the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a scholarship program earmarked for black University of Iowa students studying physical sciences was “impracticable” under SFFA. State governments would be wise to repeal these discriminatory grant programs, or the courts will do it for them.
Show More