How should we tackle moral panics about free speech? If there are any institutions that should be above culture wars, they are universities. They live or die by their commitment to ethical standards in research and their mission to ensure that students in the course of their studies learn to think critically about challenging ideas. Yet despite their achievements during the pandemic, universities are currently under attack by governments in many parts of Europe for allegedly embracing ideologies and restricting free speech. The Polish Minister for Education recently announced that, “especially in the humanities and social sciences”, the way things are going is “not in the direction we would like”. Legislation has been promised to guarantee that academics expressing conservative, Christian or nationalist views will not be disciplined.