Articles & Chapters

Alan Lightman: “Americans must insist on academic freedom, or risk losing what makes our nation great.”

April 30, 2025

In The Atlantic, CMS/W Professor of the Practice Alan Lightman makes the passionate — and correct — case that “academic freedom is the greatest lesson we can give to our students”:

Our young people are shaping the future. Do we want them to be afraid to express their ideas? Do we want them to be afraid to explore, to invent, to challenge the status quo? Do we want them to be afraid of being who they are?

We set examples for our young people and students, moral as well as intellectual. Do we want them to see us restrict what we teach because of the rules imposed by some outside authority? Do we want them to see us hide evidence that challenges a prevailing viewpoint? Do we want them to see us deny admission to other qualified students because of quotas or ideological litmus tests or country of origin? Do we want them to see us conform to outside decrees that undermine our values? Do we want them to see us prioritize money above all other things? Do we want them to see us as cowards, lacking the courage to stand behind our values and convictions?

Read the full piece: “The End of the Enlightenment?”, The Atlantic, April 30, 2025.

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CMS/W

MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing offers an innovative academic program that applies critical analysis, collaborative research, and design across a variety of media arts, forms, and practices.

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Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. He was educated at Princeton University and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Before coming to MIT, he was on the faculty of Harvard University. At MIT, Lightman was the first person to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities, and was John Burchard Professor of Humanities before becoming Professor of the Practice of the Humanities to allow more time for his writing. Lightman’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic,Granta, Harper's, Nautilus, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in fiction. His most recent books are Screening Room: A Memoir of the South (2015), The Accidental Universe (2016), Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018), In Praise of Wasting Time (2018), Three Flames (2019), Probable Impossibilities (2021), and The Transcendent Brain (2023). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has six honorary degrees. He is on-camera host of the public television series, SEARCHING: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science, which is based on some of his books. Lightman is also the founder of the nonprofit Harpswell, which works to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia.

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Written by Alan Lightman

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