The Academic Freedom Alliance released a public letter to St. Olaf College calling on the college to reaffirm the academic freedom of religion and philosophy professor Edmund Santurri.
Santurri has long served as the director of the Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf. The Institute encourages inquiry and debate into contemporary political and social issues and seeks to present "diverse ideas" to the campus community on controversial issues relating to politics, markets, and society. As part of its programming, the Institute sponsors public lectures, and in recent years it has hosted lectures by a range of speakers, including David Brooks, Glenn Loury, Alice Dreger, Michael Sandel, Bari Weiss, and Bryan Caplan. Unsurprisingly, such speakers discussing such topics sometimes generate controversy on college campuses, and controversies have sometimes swirled around the Institute.
In the spring of 2022, such a controversy took a troubling turn. The Institute invited Princeton philosopher Peter Singer to give a public lecture on his views regarding contemporary moral philosophy. Singer is a controversial figure, and some students launched a petition calling for a boycott of his talk at St. Olaf. Several offices on campus set out emails to students distancing themselves from Singer's views, but the talk took place without disruption or cancellation.
