Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 for U.S. Politics within the Social and Behavioral Sciences category.
"Dean Robert Post, one of our nation's most insightful First Amendment scholars, provides an eye-opening analysis of the inherent tension between our commitment to a free-wheeling marketplace of ideas and our need to recognize and protect the values of expertise."—Geoffrey R. Stone, The University of Chicago
"In this brilliant and innovative book, Robert Post makes a conceptual breakthrough in First Amendment analysis. As a lawyer who has litigated and written about academic freedom issues for over three decades, I am especially impressed that Post has moved beyond the undeveloped and often confusing judicial recognition of academic freedom by providing a convincing justification for its constitutional protection." —David Rabban, University of Texas School of Law
"We press the First Amendment with two conflicting desires: On one side, we want to protect speech as a productive cacophony (marketplace of ideas). On the other, we ferociously defend the hard-won, disciplined, often hierarchical production of research knowledge that is far from the blasts of opinion against opinion. In this remarkable and timely book, Robert Post sorts through the constitutional issues behind this tension and gives us a vocabulary to move forward. Though Post always keeps real cases front and center, his lively discussion opens up a pragmatic, philosophical stance that all of us would do well to take on board: citizens, jurors, politicians, and indeed anyone concerned with freedom of speech. This is a terrific, important book."—Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University
"Most books on the First Amendment begin by attempting to define the concept and then connect it to democratic procedures. Robert Post does the reverse. He begins with the First Amendment commitment to the free formation of public opinion and then finds that this undoubted commitment necessitates a doctrine of academic freedom. The result is an argument that seems more inevitable and right at its every stage." —Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Professor of Law at Florida International University
"At a time when "expert opinion" is coming increasingly under dark suspicion—when the political "mainstream" suddenly seems to include not only those who question the reality of climate change but those who blithely reject evolution itself—Robert Post's Democracy, Expertise and Academic Freedom arrives like a desperately needed beam of light. Post's analysis of the tangled relationship between the First Amendment, the ideal of "the marketplace of ideas" and what he calls "disciplinary knowledge" is creative, surprising, thought-provoking, important—and absolutely convincing. A necessary, timely book."—Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War
