Overview

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities. In this path-breaking book, Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry.

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9781509564538

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"""You Can’t Teach That! is an important and timely book. The recent wave of state legislative restrictions on academic freedom is a dangerous development, and Keith Whittington makes a strong case that these laws are inconsistent with the best understanding of First Amendment freedoms."" Thomas Moylan Keck, Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University"

"""You Can’t Teach That! is an important and timely book. The recent wave of state legislative restrictions on academic freedom is a dangerous development, and Keith Whittington makes a strong case that these laws are inconsistent with the best understanding of First Amendment freedoms."" Thomas Moylan Keck, Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University “A robust and authoritative overview of the fierce debates over academic freedom in America.” Floyd Abrams, Senior Counsel, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP “This timely and urgent book provides the best available overview of the most aggressive attack on academic freedom since the McCarthy era. Everyone who cares about American higher education should read it.” Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution"

Author Information

Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and a leading expert on academic freedom and American constitutional law and politics. Among his prize-winning books is Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech. He is the founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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