CHE reports on the letter here; I’ve sent CHE the following letter to the editor:

I signed two earlier letters defending the academic freedom rights of Nathan Cofnas, since the principles of academic freedom encompass racist scholarship, as long as it meets the standards of the applicable discipline, and even if it is of dubious merit.  I declined, however, to sign the most recent letter, the subject of your recent article:  https://www.chronicle.com/article/should-jason-ardays-accuser-be-defended-american-scholars-disagree.  This most recent letter is predicated on a total misunderstanding of academic freedom, in principle and in law.   The letter states:  “An essential component of academic freedom is the ability to scrutinize the scholarship of other academics, regardless of their position or status. This must include the freedom to provide evidence of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and fabrication.”   Academic freedom in every jurisdiction that recognizes it protects freedom in research and teaching within the limits imposed by the relevant scholarly discipline.  Academic freedom in no jurisdiction includes a roving right to “scrutinize the scholarship of other academics,” even those outside your areas of disciplinary expertise.  If it did, then it would protect non-academics as well as academics.  If such roving investigations are protected, it is by principles of free expression, not academic freedom.

Dr. Cofnas’s expose of Jason Arday’s plagiarism and other fabrications and exaggerations involved no scholarly expertise at all, let alone Dr. Cofnas’s expertise in philosophy of biology.  His expose could have been written by anyone with access to a plagiarism detector.  Under the American law of academic freedom, this speech would be protected because the U.S. is unusual in protecting “extramural” speech (e.g., speech on matters of public interest unrelated to one’s scholarly expertise) under the rubric of “academic freedom.”  But that is not the law in Belgium, or in the United Kingdom, where Dr. Cofnas did his graduate training.  Indeed, Belgium’s “Moreaux law” imposes particularly strict restrictions on racist speech, restrictions reflected in the University of Ghent’s own code of ethics.  Some of Dr. Cofnas’s work arguably runs afoul of that code.  To the extent that reaches his actual scholarship, it infringes on his academic freedom, but that is not what was at issue in this case.  (Academic freedom rights, of course, often yield before other legal requirements.)

Since the latest open letter involves fictions about “academic freedom” and its scope (fictions repeated by Professor Steven Pinker in the aritcle), I declined to sign it.  Academic freedom is not the freedom of academics to say whatever they want, and outside the U.S., it is always limited to freedom in research and teaching within the limits imposed by the scholar’s discipline.

Sincerely,

Brian Leiter

Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence

Director, Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values

University of Chicago

UPDATE: A reader points out that the 2023 Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act in the UK does secure a general right of free expression for academic staff under the (misleading) heading of “academic freedom” (what the Act should have said is that academics have rights to freedom of speech, without endangering their jobs). This is unlike the act passed in the late 1980s protecting actual academic freedom when Thatcher abolished tenure. This new terminological oddity of British law has no bearing on Dr. Cofnas’s rights in Belgium, of course, or on the principle of academic freedom going back to Humboldt.