Is institutional academic freedom on the decline?

More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court first recognized the “four essential freedoms” of institutions of higher education: the freedoms to determine “who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study” ( Sweezy v. New Hampshire , 354 U.S. 234, 263 (1957)). Since then, institutions of higher education have cited this concept of institutional academic freedom to remind courts they aren't well‐suited (or qualified) to make decisions involving subjective judgments about individual faculty members’ professional capabilities, and to caution courts from interfering in purely academic decisions made by faculty members.