Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech

The Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech (CAFFS) launched at the start of the 2024–2025 academic year. CAFFS aims to become a leading hub for academic freedom and free speech and seeks to safeguard these values for future generations.

The center brings to campus scholars, university leaders, advocates, and policymakers for both private workshops and public events to discuss the state of free speech and academic freedom, best policies and practices for realizing a robust culture of free speech, and the future of free speech and academic freedom in the United States and across the world. 

The center helps track emerging threats to academic freedom, advocate for policies to protect free speech and academic freedom, foster better understanding of and appreciation for the principles of free speech and free inquiry, and support scholarly and public conversations on critical issues relating to free speech and academic freedom.

Read more about the launch of the center.

To subscribe to the center’s newsletter, please visit subscribe.yale.edu.

CAFFS is directed by David Boies Professor of Law Keith E. Whittington. Whittington is a renowned scholar of academic freedom and free speech and has written extensively on both topics. 

His recent books include You Can’t Teach That! The Battle Over University Classrooms (Polity, 2024) and Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech (Princeton University Press, 2018). He is Founding Chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance’s Academic Committee, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellow.

The Academic Freedom Podcast

Keith Whittington hosts the Academic Freedom Podcast, a joint venture between the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Yale Law School and the Academic Freedom Alliance.

Read more about Professor Keith E. Whittington

Professor Whittington is the host of The Academic Freedom Podcast. He also is a regular contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy, hosted by Reason magazine.

“The New Culture War” on American Campuses (Yale Law School news)

“Protest and Civil Disobedience Are Two Separate Things,” Chronicle of Higher Education (April 23, 2024)

“Commander in Chains? Seven Scenarios from a Pardon to a Prison-Yard Presidency,” Reason (April 2024)

“What if a Candidate or President-Elect is Incapacitated?” Reason (April 2024)

“Why ‘Intellectual Diversity’ Requirements on Campus Won't Work,” The Dispatch (March 13, 2024)

“Impeachment and the Rule of Law,” Society for the Rule of Law (March 8, 2024) 

“Political Solidarity Statements Threaten Academic Freedom,” Chronicle of Higher Education (Jan. 26, 2024) 

CAFFS is generously supported by the Stanton Foundation, an organization created by Frank Stanton. Stanton served as president of CBS from 1946 through 1971, and following his retirement from CBS, as chairman of the American Red Cross, chairman of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Visiting Committee, trustee of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California, Harvard Overseer, trustee of the Museum of Broadcasting, and chairman of the RAND Corporation. During his lifetime, Stanton was praised for his passionate and courageous commitment to a free press.