John McWhorter is a public intellectual and prolific writer who has produced counter-narratives to contentious issues steeped in orthodoxy throughout his 20+ year career. His nominator describes him as “an inspiration and a gadfly in his articles on race and justice,” adding that “his role as a Black intellectual committed to a genuinely open inquiry about issues of race, policing, and justice in America has been essential. McWhorter is championing an actual conversation, in contrast to the imposed and ill-thought-through orthodoxy we are living through now.”

McWhorter’s articles and commentaries have appeared in several publications, including The Atlantic, Reason, The New Republic, Aeon, and many more. He has published op-eds on the increasing pressures of cancel culture in academic settings, including  “Academics Are Really, Really, Worried About Their Freedom” and “The Show-Trial Rhetoric That Took Down a Charter-School Founder.” His Quillette piece “Racist Police Violence Reconsidered” presents a more complicated, evidence-based narrative on race and police violence than is often portrayed.

When asked what open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive mean to him professionally, McWhorter shared:

“The humanities and social sciences are permeated by a sense that advocacy is the essence of intellection rather than an offshoot of it. The advocacy in question is leftist, today founded in the tenets of Critical Race Theory that hold battling power differentials as humankind’s most important mission, neglected only by the morally perverted who therefore require censure and ostracization. I stand in opposition to this perversion of what it is to think and to be intelligent, and seek the genuine exchange of ideas central to forging truly new insights.”

McWhorter teaches linguistics, philosophy, and music history at Columbia University. He hosts Slate’s language podcast “Lexicon Valley” and is a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of over 20 books on issues including race and language. His most recent book, “The Creole Debate and Talking Back, Talking Black,” was published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press. He has also composed five audiovisual courses in the Great Courses series on language.

Jonathan Zimmerman is Professor of Education and History at the University of Pennsylvania. His research explores the politics around education and, especially, how controversial issues are taught. Given this focus, it is perhaps no surprise that Professor Zimmerman was one of the founding members of Heterodox Academy. Indeed, he was featured in the very first episode of our podcast, Half Hour of Heterodoxy. However, professor Zimmerman was an advocate for viewpoint diversity and academic freedom well before the establishment of Heterodox Academy.

Throughout his career he has defended colleagues who have come under attack – whether by external forces, students or administrators – irrespective of their politics. In the classroom, he asks his students tough and provocative questions, and expects them to become historically and scientifically literate about the issues in order to answer those questions with sufficient depth, nuance and clarity.

Beyond the classroom, he has worked with Common Party to bring together students across institutional and political lines to better understand and engage with one-another in good faith – particularly with regards to divisive political and moral issues.

Professor Zimmerman also works to bridge the growing divides between institutions of higher learning and the communities they serve. He is consistently featured as one of the most influential education scholars in terms of educational practice and policy (see: RHSU’s Edu-Scholar Public Influence rankings) – and regularly advocates for academic freedom and viewpoint diversity in public-facing outlets and public talks.

In short, Jonathan Zimmerman is the complete package. On every front — research, teaching, institutional advocacy, public engagement – he is an exemplar for how to effectively promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement.

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, earned the first Leadership Award for their shared efforts to marshal support for viewpoint diversity throughout academia.

George is a conservative and West is a progressive. Together, they created the statement on “Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression” signed by thousands of professors and others. The statement says, in part:

“All of us should be willing—even eager—to engage with anyone who is prepared to do business in the currency of truth-seeking discourse by offering reasons, marshaling evidence, and making arguments. The more important the subject under discussion, the more willing we should be to listen and engage—especially if the person with whom we are in conversation will challenge our deeply held—even our most cherished and identity-forming—beliefs.”

They also take their partnership on the road, visiting campuses across the US to speak together about their joint efforts and the benefits of open inquiry and constructive disagreement.

Many professors who are conservative, libertarian, or who otherwise hold views that challenge the prevailing institutional ethos attempt to conceal their ideological leanings. They often avoid work on controversial topics to minimize the risk of drawing the ire of students or colleagues.

In contrast, Dr. Abrams has virtually always been “out” as a Republican. Rather than avoiding contentious topics, he works in political science – and has been particularly influential in his critiques of orthodoxies surrounding polarization.

He introduces his students to a gamut of political and ideological perspectives in the classroom. A founding member of Heterodox Academy, Dr. Abrams also regularly engages the public on the need for viewpoint diversity, open inquiry and constructive disagreement within institutions of higher learning.

In October 2018, he published an essay in the New York Times about the severe political imbalance among university administrators (which is even larger than the left skew among professors). In order to illustrate how this political homogeneity plays out ‘on the ground,’ Dr. Abrams cited some examples of programming at his own college, Sarah Lawrence.

In response, a contingent of students at his school – egged on by certain faculty and administrators – called for Dr. Abrams to be ousted from his post. In addition to demonstrations, his office was vandalized. There were harassment and intimidation campaigns. University leadership initially neglected to condemn these acts, and instead aligned themselves with the protestors – insinuating that Dr. Abrams had done something wrong in conducting his research or publishing his op-ed. His university president privately suggested to him that he should seek out alternative employment. Responding to these institutional signals, student activists have continued their agitations, recently demanding that Dr. Abrams’ tenure be put up for review.

Regrettably, Dr. Abrams is far from alone in facing retaliation for research or public-facing work that challenges someone’s deeply-held views. What sets Dr. Abrams apart is how he has chosen to respond to his situation. Many who have found themselves in similar circumstances chose to exit the academy. The experience of colleagues, students and university leadership turning against you, or failing to support you, can lead to deep resentment, which can curdle into reactionary politics – leading some who have been on the receiving end of these campaigns to subsequently bash students, professors, administrators, the left, and even the academic enterprise more broadly – and to align themselves with others who do the same.

Dr. Abrams, however, refuses simply disappear, or to cede his institution to opponents of open inquiry and viewpoint diversity. Nor does he allow illiberal actors define the academy – neither for himself nor the public. Instead, Dr. Abrams remains as committed as ever to highlighting positive developments, identifying exemplars, and formulating constructive and data-driven approaches to the challenges universities face. Responding to unjust treatment with this kind of grace requires a level of courage and moral conviction that we desperately need more of within institutions of higher learning – and indeed our society more broadly.

Selected media publications and scholarly essays by Samuel Abrams can be found here.

Amy Lai is a legal scholar and writer based at Freie Universität in Berlin. Born in British Hong Kong, Lai received her legal training in the U.S. She interned at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and worked at Boston-based law firms.

Her nominator described her as ”dedicated to free speech activism and the battle against authoritarianism—both overt and covert, in Hong Kong and in the Western world. She has been outspoken on social issues, including the erosion of free speech in Western academia and the creeping influences of the Chinese government in Western societies.”

Lai was selected for a 2020 Exceptional Scholarship Award in part for her book “The Right to Parody: Comparative Analysis of Copyright and Free Speech,” which proposes a legal definition of parody that ensures the right to free expression. Lai is completing her second book on the origins of the university and free speech in academia, slated to be published with University of Michigan Press. She has also published in the Globe & Mail, Apple Daily, and the McDonald Laurier Institute, a non-partisan Canadian public policy think tank, advocating for nuanced perspectives on colonialism.

Lai says that she “hopes that her book and op-eds will at least inspire people in Western democracies, especially those who have not lived under dictatorships, to not take their freedoms for granted.”

Justin Tosi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University, and Brandon Warmke is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. They were jointly selected as 2020 Exceptional Scholarship Award winners in part for their book “Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk,” which was featured on the Half Hour of Heterodoxy Podcast. They also co-authored “Moral grandstanding and political polarization: a multi-study consideration,” which was published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Their book “Grandstanding” distinguishes moral grandstanding from virtue signaling and argues that people use moral talk to gain status, power, and prestige rather than to help others – particularly in the political arena. Their nominator lauded their book for “giving us a language with which to describe contemporary ways of political communication and political speech in general,” which is crucial in a moment of extreme polarization.

Tosi and Warmke have also co-authored pieces for CNN, Aeon, The Conversation, and MarketWatch, and their academic work has been featured in The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, HuffPost, Scientific American, Forbes, Vox, Commentary Magazine, and The Guardian.

When asked what open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement meant to their professional work, and they shared:

Tosi: “For free inquiry to work, we have to be able to tell the truth, even when it’s not a crowd-pleaser. We also have to listen to and learn from people with whom we disagree. Because people are too often rewarded for abusing moral talk to seek status, free inquiry is regularly under threat.”

Warmke: “The public square is an impressive human achievement. To have a place where diverse people are free to hear and be heard is to have something worth protecting. Understanding what the public square is for and how we can protect it are two of the most pressing philosophical and scientific challenges in the digital age. This is not hyperbole. To address social problems, we must be able to talk to, learn from, and trust one another.”

Keith Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University. His recent book, “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech”, makes the case for why freedom of expression is integral to what universities are, and the roles they are supposed to play in our society – informed by an understanding of both history and our current circumstances.

The fundamental mission of the university, he argues, is to advance and disseminate knowledge. Consequently, the ultimate goal of a university community must be to “foster an environment in which competing perspectives can be laid bare, heard, and assessed.” In such a community, “unorthodox, controversial, and even wild-eyed professors” should be valued, and regarded as signs of institutional health, rather than being subject to harassment, intimidation or formal sanction – or held up as a sign of what’s wrong with higher education.

Dr. Whittington won the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE (Professional and Scholarly Excellence) Award for Education for Speak Freely. Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisburger, assigned the book as a pre-read for all incoming freshman. Copies were also provided, free of charge, to all Princeton undergraduates, graduates and faculty members. Since the publication of the book, Dr. Whittington has taken its message on the road, giving talks at universities nationwide on the importance of free expression for the university, and for society at large. He has also made his case in public-facing forums including Chronicle of Higher Education, Aeon, and Reason.

Additionally, over the last year, Dr. Whittington has published scholarly articles exploring the value and limitations of academic speech in Fordham Law Review, Academe, and in an edited volume by Routledge.

Selected media publications, scholarly essays and books by Keith Whittington are available here.

Tenelle Porter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, and Karina Schumann, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, share the Exceptional Scholarship Award.

Their article, “Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view” in Self and Identity, was an investigation into recognizing the limits of personal knowledge and appreciating the intellectual strengths of others. The results underscore how greater intellectual humility can help us be open to those with divergent perspectives.

In Studies 1 and 2, participants with higher intellectual humility were more open to learning about the opposition’s views during imagined disagreements. In Study 3, those with higher intellectual humility exposed themselves to a greater proportion of opposing political perspectives. In Study 4, making salient a growth mindset of intelligence boosted intellectual humility, and, in turn, openness to opposing views.

Matthew Burgess, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, an Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Economics, and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the inaugural Teaching Award winner. Burgess is an environmental scientist who believes in exposing students to a wide range of perspectives. He advocates for a bipartisan, truth-informed approach to climate change, saying, “any approach to addressing climate change that doesn’t pursue and follow the truth will fail. Any approach that is not bipartisan—nor gains broad public support—will fail in a democracy.”

He developed the course Envisioning Sustainable Economies, bridging concepts from macro-economics and ecological economics, which are rarely put in conversation with one another. In this course, Matt explicitly shared the importance of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement with his students; and, he developed a syllabus that explored tribalism, conflict, and inequality as it related to economics and the environment. https://arcdigital.media/what-if-a-presidential-candidate-ran-on-what-most-americans-actually-wanted-bd570321b428

Burgess has also contributed to the conversation about reducing polarization. In July 2020, he co-authored an op-ed with his undergraduate Honors student Renae Marshall entitled “What if a President Ran on What Most Americans Actually Wanted?:
Imagining the two-thirds majority platform.” The piece details the many policy positions where two-thirds of Americans are in agreement by way of highlighting areas of political agreement rather than focusing on narratives of a ‘deeply divided’ country. In Fall 2020, Burgess hosted the weekly online discussion series “Reducing Polarization Dialogue” for the CU Boulder community that aimed to develop constructive dialogue on charged issues across ideological divides.

Burgess says that “as an environmental scientist, I study and am motivated by concern about some of society’s most pressing problems, including climate change . . .  This is why open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, constructive disagreement, and truth-seeking as the core mission of academia are so important to me, professionally and personally. If we don’t stay true to these values, universities will not only fail to help society meet its toughest challenges, we will also—deservedly—lose our trusted position in society.”

Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), an undergraduate student organization dedicated to fostering a campus environment free of fear and intolerance at Princeton University, is the 2020 Outstanding Student Group Award Winner. POCC aims to promote free speech and academic freedom and to encourage free inquiry, civil dialogue, and robust discussions between the university’s affiliates.

Multiple HxA members wrote to nominate POCC this year for their impressive efforts, both past and present, to bring open inquiry to their campus. While the founding members have now graduated from Princeton, current students continue to operate POCC and promote these ideals through on campus.

POCC formed in fall 2015 in response to a polarizing sit-in at Princeton President Eisgruber’s office and protests led by the Black Justice League. In November 2015, the group wrote a letter to Eisgruber decrying protest efforts that stifled forums for debate. In 2016, Joshua Zuckerman, a founding member of the group, testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, saying that some of the protestor demands would have “especially chilling effects on academic discourse.” The group’s rapid formation in response to these events earned them coverage in many media outlets, including a write-up in The Chronicle of Higher Education and a spot on the National Association of Scholars’ 2015 Top 10 Influencers in Higher Education list. Founding members Joshua Freeman and Joshua Zuckerman were also featured in a 2016 New York Times write-up on student activists.

In 2020, 22 current Princeton students reunited as POCC, in response to a student-led petition and demands for anti-racist administration and policy changes at Princeton. Directly referring to this petition, POCC declared in an open letter to President Eisgruber they “strongly oppos[ed] politicization of the curriculum by requiring courses that reflect a certain ideological commitment.”

When asked what open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement means to them, POCC said, “An environment with increased viewpoint diversity highlights that each person is unique in their humanity. Lack of an opposing viewpoint deprives others of the potential to learn and understand nuances of various topics or experiences that they may not have. Engaging with those we disagree with requires humility, compassion and a common understanding of the inherent worth of each party and not assuming the worst out of them.”

Much of the public discussion about higher education is centered on elite private colleges, or Ivy League and other R1 universities. Yet, while these schools talk a lot about diversity and inclusion, community colleges walk the walk – providing high-quality, affordable, accessible education to populations that are under-represented and under-served by other schools: low-income students, students of color, military veterans, students from rural areas and small towns, lifelong learners, and other ‘non-traditional’ students.

Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that community colleges also tend to be far ahead of many other schools with regards to respecting and encouraging open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement. As we highlighted in our recent Reason Magazine feature, Linn-Benton Community College (LBCC) stands out even among community colleges.

The LBCC’s Civil Discourse Club was formed in November 2017, advised by communications faculty (and Heterodox Academy) member Mark Urista. The club aims to promote dialogue that enhances understanding among individuals with diverse viewpoints in an open and respectful environment.

To this end they have put on campus debates, group discussions about controversial topics and even town hall meetings with U.S. senators. They have facilitated Free Intelligent Conversation events in their local community, hosted TED speakers and Village Square events. They manage a campus Civil Discourse Wall. They even provide civil discourse training to others in their college community. As a testament to their effectiveness, the LBCC Civil Discourse Club was recently awarded full-chapter status as part of Bridge USA; they are the first (and so far exclusive) community college branch of the organization.

As members of the LBCC Civil Discourse Club graduate, some transfer to nearby 4-year institutions, and have demonstrated an eagerness and ability to propagate the Club’s vision and values at other colleges and universities too.

The levels of commitment, ambition, and innovation demonstrated by the Linn-Benton Community College Civil Discourse Club are truly extraordinary — and a model for students and faculty at other colleges and universities nationwide.

Coleman has moderated and headlined numerous events about open inquiry and viewpoint diversity. He has been a guest on major podcasts, including The Good Fight (Yascha Mounk/Slate), The Fifth Column (Kmele Foster), Exploring Minds (Michele Carroll), Making Sense (Sam Harris), The Loury Show (Bloggingheads) and The Reason Podcast. He is a columnist at Quillette; his work has also been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, National Review, City Journal and beyond. He has roughly 54k followers on Twitter. 

This is an impressive resume for any public intellectual. However, Coleman accomplished all of this in less than two years, and while pursuing an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Columbia University.

The secret to Coleman’s success lies in his analytical acuity (he is brilliant), but also his temperament: he is fair-minded and intellectually humble – yet manages to exude self-confidence and composure well beyond his years. He fearlessly challenges orthodoxies and unapologetically violates taboos – not simply for the sake of doing so (he is no provocateur), but to follow the truth wherever it leads. He transgresses ideological and partisan lines without care and — perhaps most astonishingly in today’s public sphere — changes his mind about things if the facts seem to point in the other direction.

In these regards, Coleman serves as an exemplar not just for his fellow students or aspiring public intellectuals, but for all of us. Heterodox Academy has the distinct honor of having published Coleman’s very first public-facing essay, “A Tale of Two Columbia Classes,” in January 2018. We have been blown away with all that he has accomplished since then, and we cannot wait to see what he has in store for us next.  

And as a side note, in case you weren’t impressed enough yet, Coleman is also a world-class musician who has played with Rihanna (at the MTV Video Music Awards, no less), John Mayer and others. He is truly an embodiment of heterodoxy!

Zachary R. Wood is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal and a class of 2018 graduate of Williams College, where he served as president of Uncomfortable Learning, a student group that sparked national controversy for inviting provocative speakers to campus.  

His commitment to viewpoint diversity extends far beyond the campus of Williams College. In addition to writing advocacy pieces in national publications like The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, he provided the opening statement at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ‘Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses’ and delivered a popular TED talk whose title says it all: “Why it’s worth listening to people you disagree with“.

His book, “Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America”, was published in 2018.

Beginning in the 2014-15 school year, there was a marked uptick in protests and unrest in universities nationwide. Over the next few years they escalated into a series of high-profile demonstrations and clashes – often leading to shoutdowns, disinvitations, firings and resignations. Elite schools were hit the worst. Claremont McKenna College (CMC) was not immune. What set CMC apart was how the community rose to meet these challenges.

This year CMC launched a new initiative, The Open Academy, to help students develop the intellectual and social skills needed to express themselves, debate with respect, and listen actively.  The scale of this investment is perhaps unprecedented: $20 million dollars over 10-years, with multiple institutional components to inform campus culture in deep and enduring ways.

Thanks to a significant grant from the Mellon Foundation, professors from different ideological vantage points co-teach courses at CMC, providing students with models for—and practice at—developing a common understanding of critical issues.

The university hosts over 100 speakers each year at its Athenaeum, the campus hub for intellectual engagement. They are one of the only liberal arts colleges in the country to earn a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) – indicating an absence of policies threatening free expression on campus – and they are among the only schools of any kind in the state of California to achieve that rating (alongside UCLA).

By foregrounding the ways freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and effective dialogue support students’ educational and developmental needs, these commitments from CMC mark a critical inflection point in the open inquiry movement.  The college has moved the conversation from reaction to intention, beyond “What’s wrong?” to “Why does it matter, for students, the academic enterprise, and the country?” and “How do we fix it?”

CMC has long been known for its demanding curriculum, and for its graduates’ outstanding return on their educational investments. Under the leadership of President Hiram Chodosh, CMC has also emerged as an exemplar for viewpoint diversity, open inquiry and constructive disagreement.

The University of Chicago has long been a national leader in modeling an institutional commitment to free speech and open inquiry. Their “Statement on principles of free expression” (known as “The Chicago Principles) offers a framework for thinking about the importance of dissent and the role of the university as a platform for debate. These principles have been adopted by other campuses across the country.

The university held a conference with 66 college presidents and provosts to promote and expand initiatives around viewpoint diversity in late 2017. From the Dean’s letter to the class of 2020 informing them that they will “not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” to its chart-topping score on the “Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges“, the University of Chicago was the clear winner of this award category.