Free Speech at Bridgewater

ɫ��Ƶ’s Commitment to Free Speech and Academic Freedom

ɫ��Ƶ is committed to an environment of teaching and learning that stimulates critical thinking, demands the rigorous pursuit of new knowledge and deeper understanding, cultivates meaningful and diverse interpersonal relationships, fosters global citizenship, and strives to transform lives and improve the human condition.

It is ɫ��Ƶ’s vision that all members of the community readily embrace the University’s values of fairness, respect, dignity and free expression, causing them to think beyond the self and to be engaged in the advancement of the greater good. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.

A student discusses his research with two others at the STARS symposium

Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. ɫ��Ƶ is legally and ethically bound to respect academic freedom. Specifically, academic freedom is understood as the right of scholars in institutions of higher education freely to study, discuss, investigate, teach, exhibit, perform and publish. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student in learning. The scholar is entitled to full freedom in research and in the exhibition, performance and publication of the results of their research, and to full freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, most specifically in the selection of their course materials and in the selection of texts. The scholar is entitled to discuss controversial issues.

Professor Meghan Murphy works with a student in a sociology class

The college or university teacher or librarian is a citizen and a member of a learned profession affiliated with an educational institution. When they speak, write, or express themself in any other fashion as a citizen, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. They should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others. They respect the free inquiry of their associates and avoid interference in their work.

As a state institution, ɫ��Ƶ is also bound to the Massachusetts Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which guarantee freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion, and equal protection.

Upcoming Speaker

“Speak Openly to the World: Academic Freedom in Divided Times”

Tuesday, April 1, 2025 | 12:30-2 p.m. | DMF Auditorium

Jacob T. Levy
McGill University

Jacob T. Levy is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and associated faculty in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. He is the coordinator of McGill’s Research Group on Constitutional Studies and was the founding director of McGill’s Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. He is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, and has been a Distinguished Fellow for the Study of Liberalism and the Free Society of the Institute for Humane Studies, and a Templeton Adam Smith Tercentenary Fellow at The University of Glasgow. Levy is the author of The Multiculturalism of Fear (OUP 2000) and Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (OUP 2014), and editor or coeditor of Colonialism and Its Legacies; Nomos LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity; Interpreting Modernity: Essays on the Work of Charles Taylor; and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Brown University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, and an LL.M. from the University of Chicago Law School. He serves on the editorial board of The American Political Science Review and The American Journal of Political Science. His writing on contemporary questions has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Globe and Mail, Vox, Foreign Policy, Salon, The Australian, Slate (France), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Reason, The Boston Review, and The New Republic.

Past Speakers

“Mill, Harm, and Campus Speech”

Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 | 12:15-1:45 p.m. | DMF Auditorium

Andrew J. Cohen
Georgia State University

Incorporating insights from John Stuart Mill’s classic On Liberty, Prof. Cohen speaks directly to current issues of speech on campus. Why are freedom of thought and action so important? What is harm? What harms come from silencing speech? In a university setting in particular, Cohen examines the need for intellectual diversity and the major harm that comes without it.

Andrew Jason Cohen is Professor of Philosophy and Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Georgia State University. He is the author of Toleration and Freedom from Harm: Liberalism Reconceived (Routledge, 2018) and Toleration (Polity, 2014). He is currently working on a book on civil discourse.

“Anti-Racist Education is Anti-Everything Except Racism”

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | 12:15-1:45 p.m. | Moakley Auditorium

Dr. Erec Smith
Associate Professor of Rhetoric, York College of Pennsylvania

“Free Speech in Higher Education”

Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023 | 12:30 p.m. | Moakley Auditorium

Eugene Volokh
Professor of Law, UCLA; noted First Amendment expert

“Dialogues in Democracy”

Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023 | 7 p.m. | Rondileau Student Union Auditorium

Lech Wałęsa
President of Poland; Nobel Laureate & Global Leader

On Tuesday, Oct. 3, President Lech Wałęsa came to ɫ��Ƶ. A pro-democracy dissident and union organizer, Wałęsa answered questions from about 20 students before giving a talk to more than 1,000 people. Read more about Wałęsa's visit »

“Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media”

Sept. 20, 2022

Jacob Mchangama
Executive Director of Justitia; 2016 Marshall Memorial Fellow

Jacob Mchangama traces the legal, political, and cultural history of the idea of free speech. From the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists, Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.

Read Dr. Aeon J. Skoble’s Bridgewater Review article about a university’s role in education and seeking truth.

According to the American Library Association, there were over 1,200 book challenges in 2022, representing 2,571 unique titles. Find out more about books from Maxwell Library’s catalog that have been banned or challenged in the United States.

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