You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities. In this path-breaking book, Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. The Culture War and the Universities      2. Academic Freedom in the United States 3. The Era of the Loyalty Oaths    4. The First Amendment Comes to Campus 5. The Professor as a Government Employee 6. Teaching in the Government School 7. Compelling Students to Believe    Conclusion Further Reading Acknowledgements Notes Index

About the Author :
Keith E. Whittington is the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a leading expert on academic freedom and American constitutional law and politics. Among his prize-winning books is Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech. He is the founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Review :
"You Can’t Teach That! is an important and timely book. The recent wave of state legislative restrictions on academic freedom is a dangerous development, and Keith Whittington makes a strong case that these laws are inconsistent with the best understanding of First Amendment freedoms." Thomas Moylan Keck, Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University “A robust and authoritative overview of the fierce debates over academic freedom in America.” Floyd Abrams, Senior Counsel, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP “This timely and urgent book provides the best available overview of the most aggressive attack on academic freedom since the McCarthy era. Everyone who cares about American higher education should read it.” Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution “superb” The Dispatch “an effective warning and encouragement for the protection of academic freedom.” Law & Liberty “Among the broader public, free expression is selling books. Scholars such as Yale University political scientist Keith E. Whittington, author of the recent book You Can’t Teach That!, have challenged campus groupthink in the most damning and effective way, by pointing out that enforced conformity of thought strikes at the heart of the academic enterprise: the advance of knowledge through, and only through, the collision and constant comparison of alternative views.” Mitch Daniels, Washington Post