College campuses follow similar processes in experiencing change to that of nature. Change can happen slowly and incrementally over long periods of time, or it can happen quickly and dramatically.

In nature, the latter happens through what scientists refer to as punctuated equilibrium. It’s a shock to the system such as an earthquake, a flood, or a forest fire. In such instances, nature is forced to adapt and will find a new stability or a new path forward. Evolution, on the other hand, is the slow process of change over eons. Slowly nature adapts.
Universities can experience punctuated equilibrium. Health professions education felt this as sharply as any corner of the academy. Clinical rotations were suspended overnight, simulation labs stood in for the bedside, and residency programs improvised supervision across screens. Programs adapted, and much of what we adopted then — telehealth training, hybrid didactics — has stayed. But the deeper shift wasn’t the technology. It was how quickly institutions discovered they could redesign, on short notice, experiences that had always been treated as non-negotiable.

Most often, change at universities happens very slowly. There comes a pernicious and slow cultural change that is barely perceptible, unless we take the time to examine it. Our once sacrosanct value of academic freedom is such an example.

A Search for the Truth

As American institutions evolved from colleges to universities, inspired in the former instance by England, and in the latter case by Germany, we adopted the value of academic freedom. Academic freedom was valued, though, for the sake of the students. Students needed the freedom to search for the truth, to question, to share, and to inquire. They needed to test their ideas and to have their ideas challenged.

Faculty did not fight for these inalienable rights; these rights were a given. Faculty did protect the students’ rights and subsequently fought to secure their own rights in helping their students in the search for truth and its exposition.

Early German universities, the model our graduate and professional schools inherited, were not led by administrators but by the faculty themselves. Faculty self-governed within a culture of academic freedom, free speech, and peer accountability. The faculty protected the academy, and the rights and values it embodied. Health professions education carried that same self-governing instinct for a long time — clinical departments once set their own standards for what counted as sound practice, sound teaching, and sound debate.

Slowly, persistently, over time, universities have adopted a business model deeply influenced by varied external interests. The academy has experienced a dangerous cultural shift from a model of professional autonomy to one of political and economic accountability. Faculty workloads and demands have increased, more time is given to securing external grant funding and publishing, and the ubiquitous nature of accreditation and assessment has absorbed much of the independence and the time faculty once spent on scholarship, mentorship, and self-governance.

In this cultural shift, we have lost some of our focus on academic freedom. In the past, faculty led the institution and policed themselves, yet today we have turned over many of these responsibilities, and hence protections, to externally-oriented administrators and boards. A resident who questions an attending’s clinical decision, or a curriculum committee weighing whether to teach a genuinely controversial but evidence-based topic — end-of-life care, vaccine policy, health equity — now does so knowing the institution’s tolerance for friction has narrowed. The instinct is to avoid the complaint rather than protect the inquiry.

Newer and younger faculty are hired, and they have been enculturated in times of political correctness and value relativity. They don’t want to offend or to be offended, to challenge or to be challenged. Our students have been raised in this same environment, and it shows. We disinvite controversial speakers or shout them down with the heckler’s veto.

The Need for Intellectual Challenge

This lack of intellectual challenge damages our academic culture of freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But worse, it weakens our students’ intellect. Not listening to other viewpoints, nor challenging oneself and others, and not engaging in the process of formulating and reformulating arguments creates flabby minds. Civil discourse then falls into a trap of emotional name-calling devoid of rational inquiry and debate.

A recent college graduation speaker shared a poignant story. In 1991, the University of Arizona opened Biosphere 2. When this wholly self-contained ecosystem first opened, the climate and weather were perfectly controlled. There were no wind or storms. All was good. But after a while, before trees could reach maturity, they started to lean over. They were weak. There were no wind or storms to stress them. As a result, their trunks never built necessary strength. The same holds true for our students’ minds — and it holds with particular force for the clinicians and health professionals we are training, who will be expected, on their first day of independent practice, to hold up under exactly the kind of pressure a sheltered education never let them feel. They need to face the rigors of intellectual challenge.

All this to say, there has been a confluence of events over the decades which have convened to erode our academic freedom—the freedom of our students to learn, to think, to challenge, and to be challenged. It’s been slow and pernicious, and it has snuck up on us.

Advocating for Academic Freedom

This is the time for chairs, program directors, and deans to step back into the fray — not as bystanders diagnosing the decline, but as the people whose daily decisions actually set the culture. That means protecting a junior clinical faculty member’s latitude to teach a controversial topic honestly, even when it draws a complaint. It means building enough psychological safety into residency and clinical training that a trainee can challenge as well as comply. It means modeling, in our own faculty meetings and committee rooms, the civil disagreement we say we want our students to practice. Our academic freedom is one side of the coin. Our responsibility for the culture that sustains it is the other. It’s not only our own freedom that is at stake, but that of our students — some of whom will be joining our ranks and leading our institutions shortly. We must ask ourselves what culture we wish them to inherit from us.

References

Perry Rettig, Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and Tenure at the Modern University: Necessary Conversations with our Internal and External Communities, Lexington Books (2026).

Author:

Perry Rettig, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor, Piedmont University

Dr. Perry Rettig is Distinguished Professor at Piedmont University and former Vice President of Academic Affairs. He is author of over a dozen books ranging from academic leadership to learning and cognition. As a former K-12 teacher and principal, Rettig is now in his 44th year as an educator. He is a Senior Consultant for AAL.