The Free Inquiry Papers

This is an essential and eye-opening collection where a diverse coalition of scholars, edited by Robert Maranto, confronts the mounting threats to free inquiry, free speech, and open debate across American higher education, exposing how activism and status have displaced truth-seeking in the social sciences and humanities—and offering concrete, urgently needed solutions to restore academic freedom before both science and democracy pay the price.

In universities and other truth-seeking institutions, free inquiry is under threat.

The practice of free inquiry rests on tolerating dissent and promoting data and logical argument over feelings, status, party rule, or group affiliation. Many of the most noted successes of the West are the fruits of free inquiry, but this legacy is now at risk. Furthermore, our education system is failing to teach the values of free inquiry and free speech, which are vital to preparing citizens to work alongside those with differing opinions.

In The Free Inquiry Papers, an impressive array of academics come together to address this urgent problem. Across 21 chapters, the authors lay out the arguments for free inquiry, document the current threats, and offer solutions to protect and advance free inquiry. The authors represent a range of academic and political backgrounds, but they agree on three fundamental perspectives. First, the current higher education regime now prioritizes activism and status over the search for truth, especially in the social sciences and humanities. This is neither politically nor scientifically sustainable. Second, improvements are possible and would enhance the institutions’ validity and credibility. Third, no one has all the answers.

The erosion of support for free inquiry matters for everyone, but it is especially dangerous for the institutions whose mission is the production of ideas and knowledge. If we lose our ability to debate and discuss ideas openly and honestly, then both science and democracy will yield to a new dark age.

Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He does extensive work on school choice, school reform, and higher education reform, and he edits the Journal of School Choice. 

Catherine Salmon is a professor of psychology and director of the Human-Animal Studies program at the University of Redlands. She is also the editor in chief of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. 

Lee Jussim is a distinguished professor and chair of the Psychology Department at Rutgers University. He is also a founding member of the Heterodox Academy and the Academic Freedom Alliance.

Sally Satel is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the staff psychiatrist at a local methadone clinic in Washington, DC. Dr. Satel was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University from 1988 to 1993 and remains a lecturer at Yale.

Graeme Auton is a professor of political science at the University of Redlands.