To fight off threats to academic freedom, academia needs to rediscover its core principles

Academia is under increased, and increasingly successful, threat.  Threats to academic freedom and tenure should be strenuously resisted, yet authoritarian efforts are successful precisely because academia has increasingly lost its way.  Shrill identity politics advocacy has too often replaced open inquiry and good data as the emphasis of academia.  As a consequence, and alongside soaring costs, public confidence in universities is decreasing.  Universities would be well served by rediscovering principles of free speech, institutional neutrality, and an emphasis on