ABSTRACT
Alexander Meiklejohn became the President of Amherst College at an early age. He was fired for his progressive ideas and later fired at the University of Wisconsin for the same reason. In academic exile, he took to the study of law and developed his now-famous “absolutist” theory of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court at first ridiculed his interpretation of free speech but converted to his view in the landmark case of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). Meiklejohn’s vision of free speech is not hard to explain—he believed that political speech can never be suppressed—but he also held ideas about academic freedom and liberal education which were anti-libertarian. Influenced by Rousseau, he construed the American college not as a free-speech zone but as a place where students are trained to be good citizens. The students are to be taught, through a required core curriculum, not how to speak freely but how to speak intelligently about political matters. Free speech without liberal education is futile, he believed. The chapter explains Meiklejohn’s legal and educational ideals and the ups and downs of their reception in the worlds of law and higher education.
