The Athenian Circle: Jonathan Turley’s Blueprint for a Free Speech Renaissance on Campus

Reviving open inquiry requires reshaping how universities conceptualize free speech

 

By Harrington Shaw

March 27, 2025

 

The fight for free speech on campus is not an isolated endeavor. It is inextricably linked to the flourishing of open discourse in society at large. Whether we succeed in restoring universities as bastions of free thought will shape the future of human freedom in the West.

 

In his latest book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley dedicates a chapter to free speech in higher education. He argues that the “greatest threat facing free speech” today may be the transformation of universities from havens of open inquiry into enforcers of orthodoxy and censorship. Higher education, once a defender of the pursuit of truth, now often undermines the marketplace of ideas, teaching students that “triggering” ideas are akin to violence and must be silenced.

 

This shift stems from the rise of “functionalist” approaches to speech protection, which have distorted academia’s commitment to free thought. These approaches abandon John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas—where all views compete freely—for a narrower stance: speech deserves protection only if it yields “expert knowledge and understanding.” 

 

This functionalist view has empowered authorities to suppress anything deemed lacking in “expert” value. Consider the politicians and academics who claim to support free speech, but suppressed discussion of the COVID-19 response by anyone other than “the experts.” Law professor Alexander Tsesis has defended censorship in this vein by arguing that regulating ‘bad’ speech “outweighs the minimal burden it places on speakers.” Meanwhile, the "speech-as-harm" narrative—where opposing views are framed as threatening or inherently violent—is used to justify censorship by equating ideas with physical attacks. Turley warns that “what was once a protected space for viewpoint diversity has become a place for enforced orthodoxy,” a shift driven by decades of conditioning students to see speech as a danger rather than a right.

 

Turley’s remedy is the "Athenian Circle," a vision blending Plato’s Academy in Ancient Greece with John Stuart Mill’s concept of liberty. Mill wrote of a “circle around every individual human being, which no government…ought to be permitted to overstep.” Turley reimagines campuses as sanctuaries where free thought thrives, rooted in each person’s autonomy rather than top-down approval. Rejecting functionalist limits, he insists that “thought and speech are essential components of the human experience.” To restore free speech on campus, he proposes federal legislation to safeguard these Millian ‘circles’ around faculty and students.

 

His plan is practical: the government should not “subsidize the denial of free speech in higher education.” Schools receiving federal funds must expel those who act violently or shout down speakers, dismantle restrictive “free speech zones,” and adopt rules ensuring discipline hinges on a speaker’s actions, not a listener’s reaction to their ideas. This last measure directly challenges “speech-as-harm” excuses for censorship. Turley also cautions against the government mandating ideological diversity, which would establish a power that could easily be abused. Instead, he advocates for conditions that protect free speech, allowing a true marketplace of ideas to emerge naturally.

 

By tying federal funding to free speech principles, schools prioritizing censorship over liberty would lose support, bearing the cost of their choices. Through this, Turley envisions a higher education system that fuses Plato’s open inquiry with modern liberalism—campuses where diverse ideas flourish, protected by robust speech rights for all.

 

Harrington Shaw is the managing director of the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance and an economics and philosophy graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.

 

Twitter/X: @harringtondshaw