Academic Freedom Is Social Justice

In 2014, Harvard student Sandra Korn wrote a column in the undergraduate newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, titled “The Doctrine of Academic Freedom: Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice.” Korn, a joint major in history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality, argued that rather than relying on the principle of “academic freedom” to guide decisions about what kinds of academic expression should be permissible, we should rely instead on principles of “academic justice."