Initiatives
Exploring society’s struggles with speech
The Chicago Forum builds on the University’s unique and unmatched historic commitment by providing a convening point for understanding and advancing open discourse in academia and the broader culture, in the United States and internationally. Chicago Forum events and initiatives bring together students, faculty, higher education leaders and educators, and a diverse range of guests who navigate the challenges of free inquiry and expression. The Chicago Forum provides platforms for deeper and broader engagement with big, bold, risky questions in an environment that encourages curious listening, honest reflection, and the openness to expanding, modifying, or even disavowing one’s own views.
The Zell Series hosts speakers, panels and events throughout the year that demonstrate and directly address challenges related to academic freedom and free expression in a variety of contexts, providing venues for interaction with students and faculty as well as the practical application of thinking and behavior rooted in the values of free expression and open discourse.
additional Initiatives
Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression
A collection of texts that provide the foundation for the University of Chicago’s longstanding tradition of free expression, principles that are at the center of current debates within higher education and society more broadly. Edited by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg, the University of Chicago Press edition will be published in Fall 2024.
Academic Freedom Institute
The Academic Freedom Institute will build upon and expand faculty understanding and practice of free inquiry and expression both as teachers impart knowledge and as exemplars of the habits and virtues of knowledge growth and flourishing. The Academic Freedom Institute will develop and cultivate intellectual leadership on free expression.
Project on Free Expression in Precollegiate Education
A partnership between the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and the Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression that seeks the adoption and adaptation of modified Chicago Principles for elementary, intermediate, and secondary schools nationally and globally.
Free Inquiry and Expression Grants
Funding opportunities to support faculty and student research, practice, and experimentation with free inquiry and expression will be available for the University of Chicago community.
Student Engagement
Current students, across all Divisions and Schools, can apply to join the Student Advisory Board.
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