The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled to strike down the part of Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which applied to professors at public institutions. I knew lots of people would be talking to lawyers (with good reason!), but I also wanted to hear from a historian about this significant event. So I emailed Tim Cain, an academic freedom expert and professor of higher education at the University of Georgia.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What is academic freedom? Why is there so much confusion about what actions fall underneath this term?
A: Academic freedom is the condition of work that allows higher education to do the job that society asks and needs it to do. In the U.S., we think of it as having four main parts: the freedoms to teach, research and disseminate the results, undertake extramural speech, and undertake intramural speech. The first two are obvious on their face, but the last two are just as important—extramural speech rights allow for faculty to speak freely about issues unrelated to their scholarly work, including on social media in the modern era. This is often termed the “full rights of citizenship,” though it is equally needed for noncitizens, who are particularly vulnerable right now.
