In his “Theses on Feuerbach,” the young Karl Marx proclaimed, “[P]hilosophers have only hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (emphasis in original). Mission statements of several of our preeminent colleges and universities follow suit. The primary purpose of liberal education, according to these formal pronouncements, is not to understand the world but to remake it.

Another high-profile act of campus censorship -- amid a coast-to-coast spate of student assaults on free speech the last two years -- occurred in late September at the College of William & Mary. Undergraduates there shut down a lecture on “Students and the First Amendment” by chanting, among other things, “Liberalism is white supremacy.” President Taylor Reveley promptly issued a statement affirming the college’s “powerful commitment to the free play of ideas.” That did little to disturb the eerie silence of most faculty and administrators around the country in the face of free speech’s travails.

Use the power of the purse to abolish speech codes—making public colleges into a model for private ones.

Few top colleges explain their purpose to students. They want to talk gender and inequality instead.

What happens when South Korean students take a close look at American democracy. By Peter Berkowitz.

Professors have a professional interest in—indeed a professional duty to uphold—liberty of thought and discussion...

'The Heart of the Matter," the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America.

At universities and colleges throughout the land, undergraduates and their parents pay large sums of money for -- and federal and state governments contribute sizeable tax exemptions to support -- "liberal" education...