In 1975, a Yale committee chaired by the late professor C. Vann Woodward, issued the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale. It stated that “The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” This was long recognized as the standard to which good universities should hold themselves.

Not anymore.

Today, instead of calling for intellectual freedom, openness, and honesty, colleges seek to avoid controversy, push uniformity, and make students comfortable instead of informed. Even at Yale, the fall semester brought demonstrations over Halloween costumes and calls for a professor to resign over an email. It’s even worse across the Atlantic.

Tom Slater, however, is fighting back. He’s the editor of a new book that lays out the problem in no uncertain terms. Unsafe Space, which features essays from contributors in both the US and UK, is “a polemic against intellectual conformity – a demand that every university be an Unsafe Space.”

While the free speech controversy has already generated its fair share of headlines and soundbites, this is the first book to go deeper. It offers insightful analysis of why this cultural shift is happening, what other changes it may foreshadow, and how free speech advocates can help stop it in its tracks.

As deputy editor of spiked – a British magazine which describes itself as “a fan of reason, liberty, progress, economic growth, choice, conviction and thought experiments about the future,” – Slater is certainly familiar with contentious ideas. One aim of the book is to show today’s progressives that the ideas they champion emerged from the same pro-freedom values speech advocates now seek to defend. A much needed history lesson if ever there was one.

In addition to Slater, the book’s contributors include FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, the National Association of Scholars’ Peter Wood, and Frank Furedi, the author of On Tolerance and Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone? It’s an interesting and important read for anyone living and working on a college campus today – and even more so for advocates of free speech and open expression. Best of all, you can get it half-price when you buy directly from Palgrave from now until April 25th!