Abstract
This essay takes up the relation between free speech and academic freedom by inquiring into the problem of academic conscience. Its claim is that academic conscience originates in a certain kind of unmourned loss. To substantiate this claim, it comments on a text written by Hannah Arendt in 1958, one year after the Supreme Court for the first time recognized academic freedom as a First Amendment right. It concludes by explaining the reason why we should understand these two freedoms in terms of academic conscience: the more we comprehend the vicissitudes unique to academic conscience, the more we can comprehend how it risks closing down the same space it inaugurates and, at best, holds open.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.