College and University Presidents

Intellectual Freedom Commitment

We, the undersigned presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities,

recognize that intellectual freedom is the foundation of higher education.
The freedom to raise questions, seek answers, pursue knowledge, examine
evidence, analyze claims, frame hypotheses, express doubts, argue for and
against conclusions, and hold the expressions of others up to the light of
reasoned criticism is indispensable to scholarship, teaching, and learning.
We understand that the exercise of intellectual freedom can and often does
result in controversy. Parties outside the university may object to some of
what is said under the rubric of intellectual freedom, and parties within the
university may also object. With that in mind we believe it is important from
time to time for the leaders of colleges and universities to affirm strongly the
principle of intellectual freedom.
In light of the controversies that often follow from exercises of intellectual
freedom, we affirm our responsibility to teach students and to remind faculty
members and university staff why freedom of inquiry and freedom of
expression are fundamental. Without these freedoms, the university
stultifies into intellectual and social conformity. We believe the university
should be a place of vibrant exchange of ideas, not an enforcer of
orthodoxies.
Colleges and universities do of course uphold distinctive educational
missions. A commitment to intellectual freedom does not compromise a
colleges right to shape its own curriculum, hire its own faculty, or in the case
of sectarian colleges, to profess a religious doctrine. The principle of
intellectual freedom does, however, impose on institutions a presumptive
burden of neutrality in matters where there is serious disagreement among
well-informed people and a position has not been laid down as a founding
doctrine of the college.
Exceptions to intellectual freedom should be few, transparent, and known in
advance to all who choose to participate in the life of a college or university.
The rightful limits to intellectual freedom lie only in the need for colleges and
universities to maintain the conditions for open and civil dialogue, and
appropriate intellectual order in the curriculum and in class.