Woodward Report
Encyclopedia
The Woodward Report, formally titled the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale, was issued by Yale University
in 1975. Historian C. Vann Woodward
chaired the committee. Yale endorsed the first section of the report as official policy.
The final paragraph of that section reads:
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1975. Historian C. Vann Woodward
C. Vann Woodward
Comer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...
chaired the committee. Yale endorsed the first section of the report as official policy.
The final paragraph of that section reads:
- The conclusions we draw, then, are these: even when some members of the university community fail to meet their social and ethical responsibilities, the paramount obligation of the university is to protect their right to free expression. This obligation can and should be enforced by appropriate formal sanctions. If the university's overriding commitment to free expression is to be sustained, secondary social and ethical responsibilities must be left to the informal processes of suasion, example, and argument.