Does Campus Carry Endanger Academic Freedom?

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) avers that it does. “The decision whether to permit or exclude handguns in a given classroom is, at bottom, a decision about educational policy and pedagogical strategy,” the AAUP states. “It predictably affects not only the choice of course materials, but how a professor can
and should interact with her students—how far she should press a student or a class to wrestle with unsettling ideas, how trenchantly and forthrightly she can evaluate student work.”

“Permitting handguns in the classroom also affects the extent to which faculty can or should prompt students to challenge each other. The Law and Policy thus implicate concerns at the very core of academic freedom: They compel faculty to alter their pedagogical choices, deprive them of the decision to exclude guns from their classrooms, and censor their protected speech.”

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