Australian Education Minister Alan Tudge has given universities until the end of this year to enforce a freedom of speech code, threatening to use legislation if universities refuse or cannot implement it. “You cannot pursue truth without freedom of expression. You cannot create knowledge without freedom of academic inquiry,” Tudge said in a speech to the Universities Australia conference in Canberra today. He then quoted what the first Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University, Sir Douglas Copland told Prime Minister Robert Menzies in a letter in 1948 (pdf): “The establishment and maintenance of academic freedom is more important than the actual research and teaching done inside the walls of a university.” Tudge was critical that some universities still had yet to begin the process of implementing the French Model Code, to which all university leaders agreed to 26 months ago. It refers to former High Court Chief Justice Robert French’s code, …