Anne Neal, the president and co-founder of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, brought up many great points in her speech on academic freedom. If we do not begin to allow the proper learning and teaching techniques, our society will begin to suffer. Academic freedom is in the decline in today’s society and Anne Neal wants to make a difference. Recently speakers have been backing out of their speeches because of student protests. Campuses are giving speakers speech codes with extremely broad rules. The ideas that are allowed for expression in these rules are decreasing because of the fall of academic freedom. Anne Neal provided an example to help explain this. In her example she claims that sexual jokes and unwanted flirtation are …show more content…
By not allowing students to develop their own ideas and receive the education they need and deserve, the entire society will suffer from an undereducated population. Anne Neal’s thesis can be applied to any courses taken at Brazosport College, or any college. If our government class was not allowed to learn about all the controversial subjects that government entails, we would all most likely leave the class knowing no more than when we began. The same goes for any course I take at Brazosport College. I am very open to learning about any controversial subject that is brought up through my college career, especially after watching Anne Neal’s speech on academic freedom. Persuasion was very prominent in Anne Neal’s speech. She used emphasis very well in her speech and she used it to persuade the listener to believe in in her side of the topic. I do not find any flaws in her argument. She used a number of viable examples to support her point. I fully support the idea that academic freedom is becoming more and more nonexistent on college campuses. I have always seen a little bit academic freedom, but I never thought I should really have more. Now that I have listened to Anne Neal’s speech, I understand that we need more academic