UPDATED: March 11, 2021 at 2:15 p.m.
Eighteen Harvard affiliates â including Cornel R. West â74, Steven A. Pinker, and Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. â signed on as founding members of a new nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to defending academicsâ freedom of expression.
The Academic Freedom Alliance, which officially launched Monday, arose out of conversations among professors at Princeton University about free speech on college campuses. By invitation, 17 current Harvard faculty and one incoming Harvard Law School professor joined the initiative.
Keith E. Whittington â a professor of politics at Princeton who formerly taught at HLS and serves as the chair of Allianceâs Academic Committee â said the associationâs founding was motivated by a âsteady drumbeat of faculty who found themselves under threat because of something they had said or done or taught.â