More than 70 Faculty Form Council on Academic Freedom, Co-Led by Pinker

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A group of more than 70 Harvard professors co-led by Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker has formed the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard — an initiative to promote ideals of free speech and inquiry. The council was announced in a Wednesday op-ed in the Boston Globe by Harvard Medical School professor Bertha K. Madras and Pinker, known for his controversial view that educational institutions have prioritized progressive ideals over free speech.

Pinker and Madras wrote that the group “will encourage the adoption and enforcement of policies that protect academic freedom.”

“When an individual is threatened or slandered for a scholarly opinion, which can be emotionally devastating, we will lend our personal and professional support,” they wrote. “When activists are shouting into an administrator’s ear, we will speak calmly but vigorously into the other one, which will require them to take the reasoned rather than the easy way out.”

The council’s six co-presidents are former Harvard Medical School Dean and professor Jeffrey S. Flier; Philosophy professor Edward J. “Ned” Hall; Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen; former Harvard College Dean and Computer Science professor Harry R. Lewis ’68; History professor Jane Kamensky; and Pinker. Flynn J. Cratty, a lecturer in History, is the council’s executive director.

The group first formally convened at a March 22 meeting, where they selected the co-presidents, according to Cratty.

The Council’s membership includes professors from across the University, including Economics and Harvard Kennedy School professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Jason Furman ’92, former University President Lawrence H. Summers, and Economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw.

Three University Professors — Harvard’s highest ranking professors — are members: Summers, Eric S. Maskin ’72, and Gary King. Its membership also includes some professors who have been involved in high-profile controversies, including Law School professors Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., who sparked outrage in 2019 after deciding to represent disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in court; J. Mark Ramseyer, who published a controversial 2021 paper arguing “comfort women” forced into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II were actually contracted sex workers; and Janet E. Halley, who represents embattled professor John L. Comaroff in court.

In a Wednesday interview, Summers said “making sure that there are no unacceptable subjects on university campuses, and promoting viewpoint diversity is profoundly important.”

“There are very serious issues of viewpoint diversity, and unacceptable subjects for dialogue and pressures for conformity at Harvard, as there are other universities,” he added Despite the reputation of academic freedom as an issue mainly touted by conservatives over the years, Lewis said that he did not consider the organization to be driven by a political agenda.

Government professor and Council on Academic Freedom member Ryan D. Enos concurred, saying academic freedom can be threatened “from both sides of the aisle.”

“At certain times, we might find that our own ideologies are the ones that are in the minority or the ones that are out of power and maybe under attack, and that limits our ability to do our jobs and to do the research we’re supposed to do,” Enos said.

But HLS professor Nikolas E. Bowie, who is not on the Council, viewed it with skepticism, writing in an email that the “actual threats to academic freedom” were Harvard’s resistance to students, faculty, and staff labor organizing efforts.

“I’m looking forward to seeing this council of tenured professors use their power against exploitation on campus,” Bowie wrote. “But I won’t hold my breath.”

University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment.

In an emailed statement, Cratty said critical discussion about the best ways to promote academic freedom was in the spirit of the Council’s mission. rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com and roughly 26 percent turnout.

Some faculty who are not on the Council, like Harvard Divinity School professor Janet Gyatso, agree that academic freedom is at risk.

“There is a great temptation on the part of politicians, especially ambitious ones, and businessmen, especially greedy ones, to try to control information and the production of knowledge,” Gyatso wrote in an emailed statement.

“But as scholars we need to be able to utter and analyse everything, including uncomfortable histories, in order to get at the truth,” she added.

For Lewis, the former dean of Harvard College, academic freedom is tied intrinsically to Harvard’s mission.

“I love Harvard, I think it’s the greatest university in the world, and I want it to stay that way,” he said.

“And the only way it’s gonna stay that way is if it’s a welcome place for people to voice unpopular opinions and to be oddballs in various ways and countercultural in various ways,” he added.

Meier attributed the number of uncontested races to the “overwhelming” student experience, adding that he does not believe this is unique to Harvard’s campus.

Mauro said she believes low turnout could indicate student satisfaction with the HUA.

“I imagine if people were in a rage about the HUA’s failings so far, more people would’ve turned out,” she said.

Comaroff Protest in University Hall

Last month, activists occupied University Hall — home to the offices of top DSO administrators — in protest of Harvard’s Title IX policies and the continued employment of professor John L. Comaroff, who is accused of sexual harassment.

During the protest, students spoke directly to Brandt and Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana to share their concerns. In the Thursday interview, Brandt did not comment on whether she supported the protesters’ demands.

“We are here to support students in terms of the concerns and questions that they’re raising and to figure out how to meet the needs that they’re expressing as best we can,” Brandt said. Meier said that administrators from the DSO “deeply value the freedom of expression and the rights of free speech.”

“That is paramount to the work we do in the Dean of Students Office and it manifests in any number of ways,” Meier said. “This is just one of those ways.” legitimize and further its legacy of corporate profiteering and destruction,” the letter reads.

The students called on Freeman to “choose a different weapon in the fight against climate change” and to align herself with “allies who truly care about making progress, not profits.”

In the statement on her personal website, Freeman wrote that she views her role on the board as a vehicle for progress.

“From my seat at the board table, I participate candidly and forcefully in discussion, introducing an important perspective that otherwise would be missing. I press for solutions and progress,” Freeman wrote. “I believe that I make a positive difference, and if I did not, I would not do this work.”

The Guardian reported on April 6 that Freeman helped facilitate a meeting via email between ConocoPhillips and John C. Coates, then set to become the acting director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance.

In the emails, Freeman vouched for two ConocoPhillips executives and failed to disclose her position at the company in the emails, signing off as a Harvard law professor, the Guardian reported.

“ConocoPhillips is widely recognized as the oil and gas industry leader on climate related disclosure,” Freeman wrote according to the Guardian.

Phoebe G. Barr ’23-’24, an organizer for Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard — which separately obtained copies of the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request — said the emails provide evidence of the existence of a conflict of interest between Freeman’s role at ConocoPhillips and her position at Harvard.

“We see her actively working for ConocoPhillips and on ConocoPhillips side, and so we think that this is just a greater confirmation of the problem and the conflict of interest and the fact that ultimately, Jody Freeman is working for this oil company,” she said.

In a separate statement on her personal website published April 12, Freeman defended the emails.

“I did not request or initiate any meeting. John, my Harvard Law School colleague, when he was still at Harvard, asked me to connect him to people at the company as part of his process of gathering information from all stakeholders,” Freeman wrote.

“I responded to his request and connected him to the company, introducing him to knowledgeable people there, explaining who they were,” she added.

In a statement to The Crimson, Coates clarified that he knew about Freeman’s role at ConocoPhillips and that he initiated the conversation, adding that Freeman did not “lobby” him or other SEC officials.

ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Richard W. Painter ’84, the former chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office, said in an interview that “it’s okay” to get additional compensation “as a director or consulting.”

“But there needs to be a firm boundary between the university role and the private consulting,” Painter said.

Richard J. Lazarus, an HLS environmental law professor, wrote in an email to The Crimson that he perceives “absolutely no conflict of interest” regarding Freeman’s position and role at ConocoPhillips.

“Based on my close observations of Professor Freeman’s work on climate issues over the past dozen years here at Harvard Law School, I perceive absolutely no conflict of interest,” he wrote.

“I have never once heard Jody bend her focus or any meaningful suggestion that her service on the CP Board has limited her dedication to that mission in any way,” Lazarus wrote.

“This notion that she has instead become their mouthpiece is, with all due respect, nonsense,” he added.