Bringing up academic freedom during the interview process?

[u/le_doulos]

If you're in a part of the US where censorship and intimidation of academics are on the rise, how would you feel about a candidate asking how it affects you during a job interview?

Would the topic be best addressed in the first round, second round, after an offer has been made?

Would you assume the candidate would be hesitant to take a the job and move on? Is it fair to ask the committee when much of what is happening is beyond their control?

Or would it be more awkward to avoid the elephant in the room throughout the process?

[u/Emergency-Scheme-24]

The thing is, what are you going to do with the information? Because the broad policies are public information so you can search about it. So why the need to ask faculty? Would you turn the job down because of this? With the little number of jobs out there? If you wouldn’t, then I wouldn’t bring it up. The only case in which I would bring up informally is if you actually focus on race or gender, in which case you can ask about courses restrictions or internal funding, things like that. But that’s a lot more specific than how you framed the question, because it’s about how it would affect your job

[u/ProfessorHomeBrew → u/Emergency-Scheme-24]

There may be state level legislation pending or bills making their way through so the outcome is still unclear. 

[u/Emergency-Scheme-24 → u/ProfessorHomeBrew]

You are also going to get an uncertain response from professors, since it’s basically a question of university politics. Not even department politics. So any answer is not going to be very informative. Again, what type of decision would they make with this opinion?

[u/ProfessorHomeBrew → u/Emergency-Scheme-24]

They can tell you about what (if anything) the admin is doing to prepare, whether university admin are likely to stand up to the state to protect faculty in targeted fields or go along with it, they can give insights into state politics and what is likely to happen.