Heterodox Academy is pleased to announce the launch of inquisitive, a new quarterly periodical designed to help us think deeper and more creatively about thought, expression, conflict, collaboration, and inquiry in higher education.

With generous support from the Mike & Sofia Segal Foundation, inquisitive takes us to the intellectual plane of free inquiry, gives us a chance to pause to see things we might not otherwise, and considers work that challenges and startles us into reconsideration, refocus, and collaboration.

Why this, and why now?

Academics and their administrations are grappling as never before with threats to academic freedom, open inquiry, and viewpoint diversity. We’ve got segments of the student population looking to shut down ideas they find intolerable; elected officials seeking to legislate their personal visions for colleges and universities; professional societies and accrediting bodies trying to tell us the “right way” to think about inquiry. All this in the midst of a media world that surveils, divides, and punishes.

At HxA, we’re concerned about all this. As we work to protect and promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher ed, we monitor and respond to lack of due process with regard to academic freedom, legislation that might open or shut down inquiry and expression, and the use of ideological litmus tests by the left or right.

In other words, we attend to what’s happening in practice. But we also recognize that we won’t be able to create a better, more intellectually supportive climate on campuses if we only deal with practice. To get to that better place, we need to remind each other why it matters that inquiry and expression remain free, why we should be concerned when politics overtake evidence—why most of us came to academic life in the first place.

Along with regular features that flesh out context, each issue of inquisitive wraps a series of essays around a single theme with an eye toward seeing how people from varied perspectives and disciplines think about the sources and solutions to the problems we’re facing.

In this first issue, composed under the direction of Managing Editor Alice Dreger and with art curated and produced by designer Janelle Delia, we bring you essays on the theme of The Nerve. Our contributors explore how human nature, federal funding systems, and ethics boards constrain scientific thought and expression. They give us an inside look at the cultures of epidemiology and vaccinology. They consider whether teaching in America is really freer than pedagogy under the Chinese Communist Party. And they offer insight into what courage, curiosity, and collaboration mean on today’s campuses.