Academic Freedom in Canada

To fulfil their mission of preserving, sharing, and advancing knowledge, universities and colleges must ensure that academic staff enjoy academic freedom. Academic freedom is a professional and contractual right of academic staff. It means that in their teaching, research, scholarship, publication, participation in the affairs of their institutions, and exercise of their broader rights as citizens, academics are not curtailed by their administration, by colleagues, or by outside interests. It includes the freedom of scholars within the law and to inquire into and challenge prevailing orthodoxies or ideas, without being subjected to reprisal, such as depriving them of their appointment, institutional rights, or privileges.