The freedom to say what discomfits

Freedom of speech in general and academic freedom in particular have always been placed under pressure or even active assault because they are, by design, uncomfortable. After all, no one needs the freedom or protection to utter comfortable pablum or to make statements which flatter the rich and powerful. Those statements do not require protection because no one is trying to silence them. It is the uncomfortable statements which require speech protections, which in turn means that free speech and academic freedom are in a sense always going to be unpopular. Now just because a statement is uncomfortable doesn’t make it true, but the wisdom here has always been that this discomfort is good, that it is valuable to create spaces in society where uncomfortable things can be said, precisely because sometimes those uncomfortable things are true and necessary to say and systems which try to selectively limit what can be said end up co-opted by the powerful to serve their interests, rather than the interests of the community.

—Bret Devereaux (emphases in the original)