Academic Freedom Is Under Attack. College Accreditors May Be the Best Line of Defense.

In the year 1600, Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar, was burned at the stake. Why? His intellectual pursuits led him to believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth as the Catholic Church insisted.1 In the ensuing decades, Galileo Galilei was more cautious in how he published the findings from his telescopic observations, following guidance from the Pope’s representatives regarding how to frame the research. His strategy worked for a while. Eventually, however, intolerant activists demanded that Galileo be punished, and ultimately, as an old man, he was called to Rome, forced to recant his views under threat of torture, and imprisoned until his death.