Academic freedom

Academic freedom is the freedom of teachers, students, and academic institutions to pursue knowledge wherever it may lead, without undue or unreasonable interference.^[1] At the minimum, academic freedom involves the freedom to engage in the entire range of activities involved in the production of knowledge, including choosing a research focus, determining what to teach in the classroom, presenting research findings to colleagues, and publishing research findings. ^[2] Still, academic freedom has limits. In the United States, for example, according to the widely recognized "1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure"^[3], teachers should be careful to avoid controversial matter that is unrelated to the subject. When they speak or write in public, they are free to express their opinions without fear from institutional censorship or discipline, but they should show restraint and clearly indicate that they are not speaking for their institution. Academic tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring that teachers can be fired only for adequate cause, such as gross professional incompetence or behavior that evokes condemnation from the academic community itself.

The rationale for academic freedom

Proponents of academic freedom believe that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy. Academic communities are repeatedly targeted for repression due to their ability to shape and control the flow of information. When scholars attempt to teach or communicate ideas or facts that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities, they may find themselves targeted for public villification, job loss, imprisonment, or even death. In North Africa, a professor of public health discovered that his country's infant mortality rate was higher than government figures indicated. He lost his job and was imprisoned.^[4]

The fate of biology in the Soviet Union shows why society has an interest in protecting academic freedom. A Soviet biologist named Trofim Lysenko rejected Western scientific advances and proposed a new, unscientific approach to biology (called Lysenkoism) that was based on the principles of dialectical materialism. Because of their propaganda value, Lysenko's ideas proved appealing to the Soviet leadership, and he became the director of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences; subsequently, Lysenko directed a purge of scientists who professed "harmful ideas," resulting in the expulsion, imprisonment, or death of hundreds of Soviet scientists. Lysenko's unscientific ideas were implemented on collectivised farms in the Soviet Union and China. Famines that resulted partly from Lysenko's influence are believed to have killed 30 million people in China alone.^[5]

Academic freedom for students

The ideas of academic freedom as a right of the student is German in origin. In this model (known in German as Lernfreiheit), the student is free to pursue their own course of study, taking whatever courses they like at whatever university they choose. This ideal was carried to the United States in the 19th century by some scholars who had studied at German universities. It was most prominently employed in the United States by Charles Eliot at Harvard University between 1872 and 1897, when the only required course was freshman rhetoric.

In the U.S., students' academic freedom is legitimately regulated by the faculty's freedom to determine which viewpoints are supported by scholarly standards, peer review, and established norms in their disciplines. According to a U.S. appelate court decision,^[6] "a professor's rights to academic freedom and freedom of expression are paramount in the academic setting." For this reason, U.S. students do not have the right to insist that professors provide "equal time" for competing viewpoints.^[7] A student may be required to write a paper from a particular viewpoint, even if the student disagrees with that viewpoint, as long as the requirement serves a legitimate pedagogical purpose.^[8] However, the faculty's rights to determine legitimate subject matter are not absolute to the point of compromising a student's right to learn in a hostile-free environment." Professorial speech is protected only to the extent that it is "germane to the subject matter."^[9]

Academic freedom for professors

The concept of academic freedom as a right of faculty members (Lehrfreiheit in German) is an established part of German, English, French and American cultures. All four acknowledge the right of a faculty member to pursue research and publish their findings without restraint, but they differ in regard to the professor's freedom in a classroom situation.

In the German tradition, professors are free to try to convert their students to their personal viewpoint and philosophical system.^[10] Nevertheless, professors are discouraged or prohibited from stating their views, particularly political views, outside the class; in regard to his teaching, there should be no duties required of the professor, no prescribed syllabus, and no restriction to a particular subject.

In the United States, academic freedom is generally taken as the notion of academic freedom defined by the "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure," which was jointly authored by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges (AAC). These principles state that "teachers are entitled to full freedom in discussing their subject." ^[11] The AAUP works with colleges and universities, including private and religious institutions, to implement these principles as the basis for contractual relationships with faculty. Colleges and universities that are found to violate these principles are placed on a list of censured institutions.

A professor at a public French university, or a researcher in a public research laboratory, is expected, as all civil servants, to behave in a neutral manner and not favor any particular political or religious point of view during the course of his duties. However, the academic freedom of university professors is a fundamental principle recognized by the laws of the Republic, as defined by the Constitutional Council; furthermore, statute law declares about higher education that teachers-researchers [university professors and assistant professors], researchers and teachers are fully independent and enjoy full freedom of speech in the course of their research and teaching activities, provided they respect, following university traditions and the dispositions of this code, principles of tolerance and objectivity (Education Code, L952-2). The nomination and promotion of professors is largely done through a process of peer review rather than through normal administrative procedures.

Academic freedom for colleges and universities

A prominent feature of the English university concept is the freedom to appoint faculty, set standards and admit students. This ideal may be better described as institutional autonomy and is distinct from whatever freedom is granted to students and faculty by the institution. (Kemp, p. 7)

The Supreme Court of the United States said that academic freedom means a university can "determine for itself on academic grounds:

1. who may teach
2. what may be taught
3. how it should be taught, and
4. who may be admitted to study." (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 312. 1978.)

Academic freedom and the First Amendment

In the U.S., the freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment, which states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." By extension, the First Amendment applies to all governmental institutions, including public universities. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that academic freedom is a First Amendment right.^[12] However, the First Amendment does not apply to private institutions, including religious institutions. In addition, academic freedom involves more than speech rights; for example, it includes the right to determine what is taught in the classroom. Therefore, academic freedom is, at best, only partially protected by free speech rights. In sum, academic freedom and free speech rights are not coextensive and the relationship between the two remains unclear. In practice, academic freedom is protected by institutional rules and regulations, letters of appointment, faculty handbooks, collective bargaining agreements, and academic custom.^[13]

Controversies

Public utterances and academic freedom

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the wave of patriotic fervor that swept the U.S., public statements made by faculty came under media scrutiny. For example, in January 2005, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill published an essay in which asserted that the foreign policy of the United States was partly to blame for the attacks. On conservative news and talk programs, he was particularly vilified for describing the World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. Many called for Churchill to be fired for overstepping the bounds of acceptable discourse. Others defended him on the principle of academic freedom, even if they disagreed with his message.

The Bassett Affair at Duke University is an important event in the history of academic freedom.

The "Academic bill of rights"

The principles of academic freedom state that teachers should be free to teach and students should be free to learn. What happens when these freedoms are in supposed conflict?

Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), founded in 2001 by David Horowitz, was founded to "protect" students from a perceived liberal bias in U.S. colleges and universities. The organization claims to have collected numerous statements from college and university students who claimed that some of their professors were disregarding their responsibility to keep unrelated controversial material out of their classes, and were instead teaching their subjects from an ideological point of view.^[14] The collection of these accounts is unregulated, however. In response, the organization drafted model legislation called the Academic Bill of Rights, which has been introduced in several state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. Many see the Academic Bill of Rights as a means of instilling a conservative bias in the nation's colleges and universities, instead of evening the playing field. According to Students for Academic Freedom, academic freedom is "the freedom to teach and to learn." They contend in "The Academic Bill of Rights" that academic freedom promotes "intellectual diversity" and helps achieve a university's primary goals, i.e., "the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large." Accordingly, the Academic Bill of Rights calls for state and judicial regulation of colleges. Such regulation would ensure that professors:

• make their students aware of serious scholarly viewpoints other than their own;
• make hiring, firing, promotion, and tenure decisions on grounds of competence and knowledge alone; and
• grade their students based on their performance and knowledge alone, and not on their political or religious beliefs. The irony, many claim, is that such a bill would actually restrict academic freedom, leaving education to ideologically-motivated legislators and judges, rather than professors.

According to the American Association of University Professors, the Academic Bill of Rights is, despite its title, an attack on the very concept of academic freedom itself: "A fundamental premise of academic freedom is that decisions concerning the quality of scholarship and teaching are to be made by reference to the standards of the academic profession, as interpreted and applied by the community of scholars who are qualified by expertise and training to establish such standards." The Academic Bill of Rights directs universities to implement the principle of neutrality by requiring the appointment of faculty "with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives," an approach they claim is problematic because " It invites diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession." For example,"no department of political theory ought to be obligated to establish 'a plurality of methodologies and perspectives' by appointing a professor of Nazi political philosophy."^[15] Concurring, the president of Appalachian Bible College in West Virginia fears that the Academic Bill of Rights "would inhibit his college's efforts to provide a faith-based education and would put pressure on the college to hire professors... who espouse views contrary to those of the institution."^[16]

References

1. ^ Columbia University (2005). "First Global Colloquium of University Presidents, "Statement on Academic Freedom".
2. ^ Ralph E. Fuchs (1969). "Academic Freedom—Its Basic Philosophy, Function and History," in Louis Joughin (ed)., Academic Freedom and Tenure: A Handbook of the American Association of University Professors.
3. ^ 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
4. ^ Robert Quinn (2004). "Defending 'Dangerous Minds.'"
5. ^ Jasper Becker (1996). Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. New York: Free Press.
6. ^ Walter P. Metzger (1955). Academic Freedom in the Age of the University. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
7. ^ Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967); Regents of Univ. of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985).
8. ^ Donna Euben, Political And Religious Belief Discrimination On Campus: Faculty and Student Academic Freedom and The First Amendment.
9. ^ Bonnell v. Lorenzo, 241 F.3d 800 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 951 (2001).
10. ^ Hardy v. Jefferson Community College, 260 F.3d 671 (6th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 970 (2002).
11. ^ Edwards v. Aguillard 482 U.S. 578, 586 n. 6 (1987).
12. ^ Brown v. Li, 308 F.3d 939, 953 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 538 U.S. 908 (2003).
13. ^ Academic Freedom Abuse Center
14. ^ http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/Statements/billofrights.htm AAUP Statement on Academic Bill of Rights].
15. ^ Alyson Klein (2004). "Worried on the Left and Right." Chronicle of Higher Education (July 9, 2004).

Further reading

Articles

• "Academic freedom". The Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
• Fish, Stanley (2006-07-23). "Conspiracy Theories 101". New York Times Op-Ed. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Web Resources and Support Organizations

• Network for Education and Academic Rights
• American Association of University Professors
• AAUP list of censured administrations
• Human Rights Watch: Academic Freedom
• CAFAS The Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards
• College Freedom