Voices: I’m a professor at at Utah college. Censorship is threatening academic freedom

I’ve been a college professor in Utah for 13 years. I am told by the Weber State University administration, almost weekly, that my academic freedom is fully protected. But given a recent controversy over free expression at WSU , that guarantee begs the question: If my academic freedom is so well-protected, why must administrators keep assuring me that it is well-protected? My experience shows that academic freedom is slowly being eroded until a career in higher education is becoming little more than delivering conservative talking points.

At its core, academic freedom is about liberty to research and teach in line with disciplinary norms. That dry statement, however, does not do the concept justice. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in 1952: “To regard teachers … as