Introduction to Curiosity, Controversy, and Intellectual Courage

Curiosity, Controversy, and Intellectual Courage
HxLibraries Symposium, Spring 2024
May 23, 2024

“The truth defends itself”; for all others, there’s intellectual courage. Explore scholarship, teaching practices, and resources to enhance open inquiry and face controversy with intellectual courage in this HxLibraries Symposium. Hear from thought leaders including keynote speaker Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath, Samantha Harris, Esq., Dr. Tabia Lee, and Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, learn from your colleagues’ lightning talks, and participate in a guided reading of the symposium common read title, keynote Ben-Porath’s Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy.^[1]

Studying, teaching, or otherwise expressing controversial views poses the risk of censorship, censure, or ostracism; in a word, cancellation.^[2] Faculty and students fear campus cancel culture, which then-undergraduate student Emma Camp characterized as “strict ideological conformity.”^[3] Fifty-nine percent of students report self-censoring in class; of those, sixty-two percent do so out of fear of negative reactions or retribution from classmates outside of class, according to Heterodox Academy’s 2022 Campus Expression Survey.^[4] The Knight Foundation reports that sixty-five percent of students agree that the climate on their campus prevents some people from saying what they believe because others might find it offensive.^[5] A University of Wisconsin report suggests that these fears are not unfounded, as fifty-eight percent of students agree that a classmate should be reported to university administrators for saying something in class that others feel causes harm to certain groups of people.^[6]

Recent reporting by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) finds that more than a third of faculty self-censor out of concern for how students, colleagues, or administrators might respond to their views, and more than half are concerned about professional repercussions stemming from protected speech acts.^[7] The National Association of Scholars reports nearly 300 academic cancellations since 2020,^[8] and FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire initiative tracks more than one thousand cases since 2000.^[9]

Campus cancel culture has also come to the attention of alumni and trustees and the public.^[10] In a 2022 survey by FIRE, nearly 6 in 10 Americans view cancel culture as a threat to freedom, and a quarter of survey respondents admit self-censoring for fear of professional or social consequences.^[11] The public’s concern about cancel culture further contributes to declining trust in higher education.^[12] While some call into question the very premise of cancel culture, regarding it as a myth, moral panic, or misappropriation of accountability culture,^[13] others claim to empirically demonstrate the reality of campus cancel culture.^[14]

This symposium joins with other efforts to teach and promote civil dialogue on college campuses by examining curiosity and intellectual courage as epistemic virtues in the pursuit of open inquiry and idea-sharing.^{[15][16][17][18]} Join us to inspire your own intellectual courage in the face of potential controversy as you explore where curiosity – and evidence and reasoning – would lead. We’ll hear from Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath, Samantha Harris, Esq., Dr. Tabia Lee, and Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, along with contributed lightning talks and a guided common reading of Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy.