Alice Dreger

1 month ago | heterodoxacademy.substack.com | Alice Dreger

With Harvard University at the top of the news today following the Trump administration’s decision to stop Harvard from having international students, we bring you a timely Heterodox Academy conversation with Harvard psychologist and HxA memberSteve Pinker. Besides being a world-class researcher in human behavior, Steve has a long history of advocacy for academic freedom, free speech, and viewpoint diversity.

1 month ago | heterodoxacademy.substack.com | Alice Dreger

How hard was it for Nick Wolfinger to find contributors to the new book, Professors Speak Out: The Truth about Campus Investigations? Not difficult at all, he said in yesterday’s Heterodox Academy webinar. So many professors have been through so many disorienting, unjust, and damaging investigations at American universities that – even though some potential authors could not participate in the book out of legal gag orders or fear of retaliation – he was able to include 22 first-person stories.

1 month ago | heterodoxacademy.substack.com | Alice Dreger

Two questions – what counts as activism in academia and what (if anything) should be done about it – formed the core of our lively webinar last Wednesday as I spoke with the University of Wyoming’s Martha McCaughey and the University of Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg and took questions from Heterodox Academy members. The idea for this conversation arose from the contributions of Tom and Martha to inquisitive, a new quarterly periodical I manage at Heterodox Academy.

1 month ago | heterodoxacademy.substack.com | Alice Dreger

While we definitely saw the kind of constructive disagreement you’d expect at any conference cosponsored by Heterodox Academy, participants at Thursday’s special May Day Conference on Free Inquiry at the University of California, Berkeley, seemed to all agree on one thing: American universities need to rebuild trust with the public.

2 months ago | heterodoxacademy.substack.com | Alice Dreger

Want to effectively and sustainably help combat antisemitism on American college campuses? Don’t attempt to force a particular definition of antisemitism, but do require antisemetic harassment to be taken seriously. Also require institutions of higher education to adopt policies that prevent disruptions to classes and campus events, preserve libraries as places for study, and protect the physical safety of those on campus.