The Duty of Care: Reclaiming True Viewpoint Diversity and Academic Freedom

The future of American education is at a crossroads: The ideals of “viewpoint diversity” and “academic freedom” increasingly conflict with rising antisemitism and the institutionalization of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.

As the Trump administration purports to promote ideological diversity among faculty, critics passionately defend academic freedom. Rather than harmonizing, these principles are weaponized in political battles where they are not mutually exclusive but inherently aligned.

At this week’s Congressional hearing of the Education and Workforce Committee, titled “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding, and Ideology,” Representatives questioned the presidents of Georgetown University, UC Berkeley, and the City University of New York. Rep. Glenn Grothman raised concerns about ideological imbalance among university faculty, asking whether their departments reflect the ideological diversity of the broader American public. He specifically challenged the witnesses on whether it was problematic that up to 95% of faculty lean toward the progressive left, which animates contemporary antisemitism. The university presidents appeared largely untroubled by this ideological skew, so long as open debate was permitted on campus.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s testimony before the House Education Committee last month underscored the confusion, too. California Representative Mark Takano (D-CA) asked whether refusing to hire a Holocaust denier at Harvard constituted an ideological litmus test. McMahon dodged the question, citing Harvard’s termination of its Middle East Studies leadership.

These exchanges highlighted a deeper dilemma: a lack of a clear definition of viewpoint diversity and the limits of academic freedom.

Both concepts should be anchored in a shared, apolitical standard: The duty of care. This principle demands that professionals act with prudence to avoid harm. Any breach can form the basis for claims of negligence. The duty of care should be practiced by professors but ultimately enforced by administrators. After all, both students and faculty enter into contractual obligations with the university—through codes of conduct agreed upon at the time of enrollment and hiring.

The duty of care should be practiced by professors but ultimately enforced by administrators.

Abandoning duty of care has proven dangerous. Professors aligned with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine are falsely accusing Israel of genocide and promoting narratives that depict Israelis as violent settler-colonial aggressors. These claims fuel demonstrations that often cross into antisemitic abuse—complete with Holocaust inversion, swastika-laced flags, and signs explicitly excluding Zionists, some 80% of Jews.

When politically charged teachings are masked as scholarship and left unchecked by administrators, a sanctioned atmosphere of hostility emerges. This hostility has extended beyond campuses and impacted our streets, as seen in the recent attacks in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C.

Legitimizing the “Free Palestine” movement alongside Holocaust denial or revisionism reflects a serious breach of the duty of care. Neglecting it means allowing ideology to override academic integrity. Professors must provide accurate information, foster critical inquiry, and avoid foreseeable harm—responsibilities that administrators must enforce to maintain a safe learning environment.

Appointing a Holocaust denier to teach history at Harvard, or permitting the likes of Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad, an outspoken Hamas sympathizer, to lecture on Zionism amounts to a blatant dereliction of that obligation. So too does the appointment of Ussama Makdisi—who wrote, “I could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7”—as the inaugural chair of a new endowed program on Palestinian and Arab Studies at UC Berkeley. That his colleagues made this decision based solely on his “academic standards,” as Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons stated, while disregarding his apparent sympathy for terror, is a stark example of how ideologically skewed the department has become, and how normalized such sympathies now are within it.

Invoking “viewpoint diversity” to suggest there are two sides to the Holocaust is not intellectual pluralism; it’s a clear distortion of historical fact. So is the misuse of academic freedom to advance fabrications like the baseless accusation of genocide leveled at Israel. Twisting facts to fit political ideology falls within the Federal Office of Research Integrity’s definition of research misconduct: “a significant, intentional, or reckless departure from accepted practices.”

Academic freedom, though vital to intellectual inquiry, is not without limits. It is not a shield for indoctrination, intimidation or discrimination. The American Association of University Professors holds that faculty must foster diverse perspectives and independent thought. They cannot indoctrinate through censorship, impose conclusions and dogma, or promote falsehoods as fact. Speech crossing into harassment or disrupting a student’s educational experience is not academic freedom.

The nostalgic appeal to an era of politically neutral universities under the banner of academic freedom ignores reality. Such neutrality never existed. Even before Oct. 7, academic freedom was selectively applied.

At George Washington University, a professor who fostered hostility toward Israeli students was shielded by academic freedom. Meanwhile, another professor was disciplined for quoting a statement by a Black author to prompt a class discussion. The result: a perverse inversion whereby incitement is protected, and genuine academic engagement is punished.

Faculty are not free to recklessly distort facts or harass students. As in the sciences, academic conclusions must be grounded in evidence and adhere to legal definitions. Fact is not subjective, and legal standards cannot be exempted as racial or political critique.

A duty of care framework that integrates viewpoint diversity and academic freedom enables educators to explore false ideas, such as conspiracy theories or historical revisionism, without endorsing them. Teaching about dangerous ideologies is imperative. Teaching from them is professional malpractice.

For educational reform to succeed, policymakers must affirm that viewpoint diversity demands fidelity in truth and intellectual honesty. Universities, in turn, must recognize that academic freedom is not a shield for dogma, but a privilege contingent on scholarly integrity and accountability. When subsumed under a duty of care, these values no longer clash. They complete each other.

Sabrina Soffer presently works with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and is a recent graduate of the George Washington University.