• An offer to become dean at a public law school is suddenly withdrawn, because the candidate is suddenly considered "too controversial." After a firestorm, the offer is reinstated.
  
• A professor is fired from his public university position after a "thorough examination of ...[his]...writings, speeches, tape recordings and other works... ."
• A legislator threatens a private university with loss of state funding after the president of Iran speaks to students and faculty.
• A professor is demoted after inviting a Nobel Peace laureate to speak at a private college.
  

Academic freedom is as important today as it has ever been.

SALT is working on creating a "best practices" analysis that supports academic freedom in the classroom and in scholarship.

1. Faculty should have great latitude in making pedagogical choices: lecture or Socratic method, experiential learning, group projects, oral presentations, as well as different forms of assessment.

2. An educational institution should not micro-manage classroom content, but it does have the right to structure the curriculum and to decide what must be taught and perhaps even make decisions about the best way to teach it.

3. Faculty have the right to regulate the conduct of students in the classroom, to limit the participation of a student who is disruptive, or to regulate the manner in which the students address one another. Faculty can ask that students support any argument with references to some authority or with logical reasoning.

4. Faculty are not free to abuse or misuse the power they have over students. If we require civility, which must refer to some level of decorum and courtsey, this stand applies to faculty as well as students.

5. Similarly, humor in the classroom is an effective pedagogical tool, but humor that employs stereotypes should be avoided.

It is also important to distinguish between legitimate and pseudo claims of discrimination. Conservatives have appropriated the language used to express the value placed on pluralism and diversity, and argue that a self-conscious policy of inclusion should be used in the creation of class materials. They suggest and promote the idea that students and faculty who espouse conservative views are the victims of discrimination. Conservatives now want to claim the status analogous to those groups that were systematically excluded from educational institutions by policies that referred to their race, sex, or religion. The analogy will not hold. This particular version of alleged "viewpoint discrimination' is not discrimination at all, but simply competition and disagreement.