Academic Staff Need Academic Freedom, Too
Aaron Stoller | 01 October 2025 | Inside Higher Ed
Late last spring, something disturbing happened in my classroom. For the first time in 15 years of teaching, I opened by telling my students I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to speak. The class was an introduction to the philosophy of education, and months earlier I’d scheduled this day for our opening discussion on critical pedagogy. But in light of charged campus climates and broader legal threats facing institutions nationwide, I realized that as an academic staff member who engages in teaching and research, I was particularly vulnerable.
What followed was one of the more important classes I’ve taught, though not about the subject I’d planned. We spent the hour investigating our institution’s academic freedom policies, asking questions of whom those policies included and excluded. We discovered the troubling reality: Although I was expected to facilitate complex educational discussions, I lacked clear protections to do so safely…