Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 204

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard faculty members were divided on whether freedom of speech in classrooms remains a problem at the University in an “Open Inquiry” panel discussion at the 15th annual Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching... Government professor Ryan D. Enos... sparked debate after he said that he believed open inquiry was not “much of a problem” at Harvard, despite having previously raised concerns about conservatives’ ability to share their views on campus... But Enos faced pushback from multiple faculty members in the audience, including Economics professor Jason Furman ’92 — who argued that “we need to be harder on ourselves internally while defending ourselves externally” — and raised concerns about persistent ideological slant in Harvard’s classrooms.

Claybaugh opened the discussion by asking panelists about effective strategies for designing balanced courses and avoiding projecting their individual political opinions onto students. But the most contentious topic was whether “open inquiry” remains an area of concern at Harvard... In open discussion in the second half of the event, Furman argued it did — pointing to examples of what he characterized as liberal biases in course catalogs and syllabi as evidence that there remained room for the University to improve...

Enos acknowledged that there was room to improve at Harvard, though he emphasized the importance of setting realistic expectations — especially in comparison to other institutions of higher education... “If we have a faculty that’s 90 percent liberal, and that’s the world we live in — and maybe that’s the problem we want to solve, but that’s a different problem — if that’s the world we live in, then do we do better than another institution with 90 percent liberals out there?” Enos added...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/1/harvard-open-inquiry-conference/.