What is Fundamental about Academic Freedom?

Slides for a research talk given at the Humanities Innovation Lab on 28 September 2026. The talk reports early and exploratory work for the #safespaces project (SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2026–2028). The talk argues that debates about academic freedom in Canada and the United States have moved from a speaker-centred understanding, in which academic speech was defended without reference to its impact on audiences, to one in which the rights of speakers are weighed against those of the audiences and communities they address. It proposes that this shift is shared across political positions: the sides disagree about which speakers cause harm and which communities can be harmed, not about whether harm to an audience counts. The change is traced through the Rushton affair (1989–90) and Western University's Department of Psychology statement (2020), Michiel Horn's Academic Freedom in Canada (1999) against testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research (2024), and the AAUP's statements on speech codes (1994) and antisemitism (2023). The talk then argues that academic freedom is not freedom of speech, and turns to Jacob T. Levy's account of academic freedom as an associational right. It reads the history of academic freedom in that light, from the Authentica Habita and Parens scientiarum through the AAUP statements of 1915, 1940 and 1970 and the Canadian tradition from the Fowke–Laskin report (1958) to current CAUT policy. It concludes that current unease with purely speaker-centred understandings of academic freedom reflects a developing peer standard for competent academic discourse. This version adds corrections and an AI acknowledgement. AI acknowledgement (from the final slide): Artificial Intelligence (Claude Code, various models; ChatGPT web) has been used throughout the preparation of this presentation, including in support of basic research conducted as part of the grant application process and for the broader project upon which this presentation draws. For this specific presentation, Claude Code Opus 5.5 was used for bibliographic work including finding and formatting references, navigating my own notes, and proofreading. All work for the last 6 months has been documented using detailed session summaries. Work prior to that can be recovered from downloaded session transcripts. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of any organisation with which the author is or has been associated. The abstract was generated by Claude Code Opus 5.5.