What is it about?
Academic freedom exists to protect researchers from political and ideological repression. Yet, in a series of experiments, we found that a considerable share of students are willing to cancel 'conservative' talks, instructors, and books. Their support for such cancellations is driven partly by pro-social concerns and partly by viewpoint discrimination.
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Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Whether 'cancel culture' poses a genuine threat to academic freedom remains a contested and polarizing question. We brought together two teams of researchers with differing priors on the issue and reached a shared conclusion: concerns about academic freedom should not be taken lightly.
Perspectives
Conducting research on this contested topic through an adversarial collaboration between researchers with competing perspectives illustrates an important point: science is capable of managing ideological conflict on its own. It does not require government interference.
Richard Traunmüller
School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Students’ motives for restricting academic freedom: Viewpoint discrimination and prosocial concerns, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2503804122.
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