Last November, the Mattone Center co-hosted a regional conference of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies. The conference, “Education, Religious Freedom, and State Neutrality” brought together scholars and jurists from the United States and Europe to compare approaches to these subjects in their respective countries. Participants were invited to submit short reflections. Tania Pagotto (University of Milan-Bicocca) submitted the following reflection, which we are delighted to publish here:
- Academic religious teachings contrary to human rights standards
The 2025 European Parliament briefing on Academic Freedom reports that academic freedom declined across many European states, with concerning developments in Lithuania, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary, and other traditionally liberal countries. Similar trends emerge in North America, where academics face pressure or negative consequences for expressing controversial views (Seckelmann et al. 2021).
Tensions are common in the context of religious instruction and in the teaching of religious law, when religious doctrines taught in universities conflict with contemporary human-rights standards. For instance, a Canon law professor might note that marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman and that and that homosexual relations contravene natural law. While a Sharia law scholar might teach that Islamic law recognises stoning as a sanction for adultery to protect an alleged public morality.
How can public institutions respond to the teaching of religious doctrines that conflict with human-rights principles?
Academic teaching and research are increasingly regulated considering the pursue “academic justice” (Ragone 2024). Academia, colleges and research institutions aspire to create learning environments free from discrimination, hatred and distress, a safe spaces for learning for the community, including vulnerable groups, marginalised communities, and protected minorities.
Comparable dynamics can be observed also in other fields, such as controversies surrounding dark heritage, monuments or statues tied to colonialism, slavery, and racial inequality. Supporters of the removal of such a dissonant inheritance promote a more inclusive collective memory and public spaces through the elimination of the symbols of oppression and the emergence of “the forgotten history” (Olusoga 2016).
To pursue educational justice and to create a space free from anxiety for everyone, institutions adopted a range of regulatory measures, tools, and initiatives that impact upon individual academic freedom.
Students, university unions, and governing bodies amended certain practices. For instance, with “no-platforming” universities and colleges might deny “unpopular” speakers the opportunity to research or teach at their institutes. A well-known example is the 2008 controversy stemming from Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation to the inauguration of the academic year at Sapienza University of Rome, due to his theological position on Galileo.
Other practices include the use of “gag orders”. Faculty can be prohibited to foster open discussions over sensitive subjects, to prevent embarrassment and feelings of marginalisation among students. Such orders restrict directly religious academic freedom and may produce a chilling effect on scholars. For instance, at the Idaho University, a faculty adviser affiliated with a Christian society was subjected to a gag order injuncted by a Court after a student’s complaint about the biblical explanation of marriage.
- Distinctions to be made: blasphemy laws and memory laws
At first glance, the legal issues surrounding religious academic freedom may appear to resonate with the restrictions on blasphemous speech adopted to safeguard respect for the religious convictions of believers (Temperman and Koltay 2017).
A further parallel can be drawn with European memory laws, whereby state authorities regulate public discussion of certain historical events, most notably, traumatic episodes in a nation’s past (Belavusau and Gliszczyńska-Grabias 2017).
Blasphemy laws and memory laws restrict free speech to protect the dignity of believers, on the one hand, and of victims and their families, on the other hand. They limit religious hatred speeches and expressions denying past atrocities or glorifying them to prevent today offences and to preserve collective memory. Both laws divide public opinion: either people advocate for restraints on offensive expression, or they defend the free exercise of opinion and speech.
The context of religious academic freedom, however, calls for important distinctions to be drawn. The rationale grounding academic research and academic teaching, in fact, operates within distinct realms when compared to that of blasphemy laws or memory laws.
Religious academic freedom of research is pivotal because of the features of the “soft sciences” themselves. Opposing views and disagreement are “the shoulders of giants” through which scholarship advances. Above all, limiting religious academic freedom of teaching would weaken not only the autonomy of schools and colleges, but also their the educational mission, acting as an intellectual gymnasium for future citizens (Ragone 2025).
- Religious academic freedom and dissent on campus
While human rights and fundamental freedoms change over time to reach new (hopefully higher) levels of protection, religious doctrines will always preserve their eternal truths. This inherent and unremovable tension suggests that questions surrounding religious academic teaching and research will probably become increasingly contentious in the near and far future.
Given the particular nature and research methodology of human sciences, removing religious teachings altogether or pressing religious schools to change the curriculum they offer may not constitute the most adequate response by the States and governments to such a delicate challenge.
From this perspective, restricting the dissemination of contentious religious teachings should be approached with utmost caution. Gagging and no-platforming methods not only constitute direct prohibitions but also operate in a preventive way, with the outcome of denying in advance any exercise of free speech by and with the learning community.
By contrast, procedures that alert the audience to possibly sensitive content, without censoring it, are a less intrusive means of minimizing distress for students while guaranteeing academic freedom. One example is the use of trigger warnings issued before teaching doctrines in conflict with contemporary understandings of rights, liberties, and democratic values.
However, neither trigger warnings are infallible nor uncontroversial. On one side, backlash may arise because the trigger warning itself is perceived as stigmatizing religious expression; on the other side, complaints may be brought when, notwithstanding the trigger warning, the alert is regarded as insufficient.
- Greater pluralism means stronger pluralism
The strength of all these measures lies in their intender aim: although imperfect, they try to reconcile academic freedom of individuals and schools’ autonomy with the pursuit of academic and educational justice.
Their weakness, however, may eclipse this virtue, since all of them are difficult to reconcile with the enduring presumption that greater pluralism fosters stronger pluralism. This intuition has been extended by scholars application even to the sensitive domains of dark heritage and dissonant cultural site, such as the permanence of racist monuments in public spaces (Lixinski 2017, 153).
Teaching religious doctrines dissonant with contemporary understanding of human rights and democratic standards should not be limited by virtue of the content (what academics teach). In fact, it would be incongruous to limit academics in the enjoyment of their free speech rights in a place where free ideas always flourished, while ordinary citizens would be permitted to express contentious opinions in the public sphere (Darian-Smith 2025).
Should any obligation be imposed upon the academic religious teachings, it should at most be limited to the responsibility to present opposing scholarly views and interpretations whenever a sensitive or contested topic arises while lecturing.
Limiting any religious teachings contrary to human rights standards would undermine the mission of universities and schools. But discussing and facing the coexistence of irreconcilable religious perspectives would strengthen democracy and cultivate critical engagement.