When universities forgot how to say no

First, expertise has been untethered from evidence. In some fields, competence now appears to require adherence to particular political positions. When positions are predetermined, scholarship gives way to ideology.

Second, pedagogical standards have eroded. Classes are cancelled for protests. Students are encouraged to attend activist events. Coursework is used for political advocacy. These are not expressions of academic freedom. They are abuses of it.

Third, universities have lost institutional nerve. Leaders fear that enforcing standards will be portrayed as suppressing dissent. But a university unwilling to say no to incompetence, to activism in the classroom, or to institutional partisanship has already surrendered the authority academic freedom was meant to protect.

This does not mean suppressing controversial research. A qualified scholar presenting evidence that challenges conventional wisdom, however uncomfortable, deserves protection. That is what academic freedom is for. But there is no moral imperative for universities to take sides on Middle East politics, gender policy or constitutional reform. Quite the reverse. These are exactly the issues on which institutions should remain neutral, while protecting rigorous, evidence-based debate.

What universities must relearn is how to distinguish disagreement from incompetence: between arguing for Palestinian statehood and trafficking in antisemitic conspiracy; between analysing sex differences in sport and denying biology; between encouraging debate on constitutional change and campaigning for a particular outcome.

Universities would not tolerate a flat-earth geography department. They also should not tolerate departments where ideology substitutes for competence, where teaching has been replaced by activism, or where institutional neutrality has been abandoned. Academic freedom was meant to protect judgement, not abolish it.

The path forward requires neither censorship nor capitulation, but something harder: the restoration of institutional judgement and the courage to exercise it.