The issue focused attention on concerns raised about academic freedom when academics openly criticize governments or corporations for repression and atrocities committed against dissidents. Many condemned censorship by academia as interfering with scholarly discourse. Others denounced academics who censor dissent from authoritarian regimes as complicit in tyranny and harming democracy. Some philosophers defended academics' right to censure repressive regimes while condemning academics who censored scholarly discourse about totalitarian regimes. Philosophers broadly advocated scholarly censorship of oppressive regimes because scholarly discourse promotes liberty and undermines tyranny. Scholars routinely exercised their academic freedom when criticizing repressive regimes