The Ambiguities of Academic Freedom

1993 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
American Association ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Lafayette College ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Religious Dimensions

While most of the cases that led to the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915 had to do with firings of professors who had championed controversial political views, the AAUP founders were also concerned about dismissals on religious grounds. One case especially, that of Lafayette College, is particularly revealing not only of the character of the religious issues involved but also of the attitudes toward religion of those who defined what became the standard twentieth-century American concepts of academic freedom. Reflections on the religious dimensions of the construction of academic freedom in America also have important implications for religiously oriented higher education and scholarship today.

The Elusive Ideal of Academic Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-240
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
American Association ◽  
World War ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Lafayette College ◽  
American Schools ◽  
The Ideal

Academic freedom arose as a prominent ideal at major American schools in the early twentieth century and with the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915. The concern was to exclude outside interests of business or religion from limiting academic freedom, as had sometimes happened. As John Dewey advocated, scientifically trained experts should be free to rule. Schools with religious heritage often had both proclaimed the freedom of professors and expected some religiously defined limits on their teaching. That was well illustrated in the controversy at Lafayette College when a conservative Presbyterian president fired a controversial professor. The ideal of academic freedom was elusive, however, because freedom always had limits as was illustrated by the controversies over national loyalty of professors during World War I. The AAUP eventually allowed religious limits on freedom if they were clearly stated in advance.

scholarly journals Removing Faculty: Patterns and Processes of Retrenchment and Restructuring

AERA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233285842110584
Author(s):  
Timothy Reese Cain ◽  
Erin A. Leach
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Due Process ◽  
American Association ◽  
Faculty Roles ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Patterns And Processes

This article uses 30 years of investigatory and special reports by the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to understand how retrenchment and restructuring practices have been enacted on ways detrimental to both individual and the corporate faculty. Informed by changes in the logics in higher education and broader understandings of retrenchment, we identified larger patterns of where retrenchment and restructuring in violation of academic norms took place. We further identified three main themes in the reports: Declaring Exigency and / or Launching Restructuring, Faculty Roles and Rights during Retrenchment/Restructuring, and Criteria Used in Removing Faculty. Together, they demonstrate how faculty were excluded from decisions to declare financial exigency or undertake restructuring, denied meaningful roles in enacting changes once exigency or restructuring had been announced, were targeted for removal in violation of tenure rights, and were denied academic due process.

The Case for Cleaning House: Sidney Hook and the Ethics of Academic Freedom during the McCarthy Era

2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Nemeth
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
American Association ◽  
New York University ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Mccarthy Era ◽  
Key Players ◽  
The University

Sidney Hook set the terms of debate on Communism, higher education, and academic freedom in the postwar United States. His view that Communists lacked the independence necessary for teaching and research—a view forged in the heated debates of New York City's radical left in the 1930s—provided the rationale for firing Communist professors across the country in the late 1940s and 1950s. Relying on close readings of underutilized archival sources, this article explores the development of Hook's thinking, charts his impact on key players in the period's higher education establishment (such as philosopher John Dewey and the American Association of University Professors), and outlines the way his writings helped lead to faculty dismissals at the University of Washington and New York University. The article also highlights the work of students and professors who challenged Hook's anti-Communist position, revealing a rich and often neglected mid-century discourse on academic freedom.

scholarly journals New Challenges in the United States

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O'Neil
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Private Colleges ◽  
American Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Professors ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Private Colleges And Universities

Academic freedom in American higher education evolves in curious and often unpredictable ways. For those who teach at public or state-supported institutions, the courts play a major role in defining the scope of such freedom. For faculty at independent or private colleges and universities, whose policies are seldom subject to court review, standards are provided by organizations such as the American Association of University Professors. Some faculties at institutions of both types may also be protected by collective bargaining agreements. After a decade or so with relatively few critical tests of the rights and liberties of US scholars, the past year or two has brought academic freedom to the fore in dramatic fashion. Three current tests merit special attention: the cases of John Yoo, William Robinson, and Ward Churchill.

Does Academic Freedom Protect Antisemitism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-46
Author(s):  
Cary Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
American Association ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Personnel Decisions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The examples listed in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism suggests that some political views common in humanities and social science disciplines are antisemitic. In some disciplines, these views are well estab­lished in both teaching and publication. Yet the American Association of University Pro­fessors has long used prevailing disciplinary views as a guide to which faculty statements cannot be sanctioned. What should universities do when not just individual faculty, but entire disciplines have been captured by radical antizionism, when students are taught that Israel has no moral legitimacy and must be eliminated? How should personnel decisions be affected? Should this evolving situation lead us to rethink the relationship between advo­cacy and indoctrination? Can universities keep the search for the truth at the core of their mission in the wake of disciplinary solidarity behind antisemitism?

Promoting Academic Freedom: Risks and Responsibilities (1995 MESA Presidential Address)

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ann Mosely Lesch
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
American Association ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Professional Lives ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Special Obligation ◽  
Free Inquiry ◽  
Special Responsibility

As we gather for our annual conference that is held this year on the eve of International Human Rights Day, it is appropriate for us to reflect on our need to protect academic freedom. As members of MESA, we are part of a global community of scholars. We have a special responsibility to uphold the principle of academic freedom both at home and abroad. The freedoms to conduct research, to teach and to communicate are fundamental to our professional lives. Moreover, we—as academicians—have a special “obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public understanding of academic freedom,” as the American Association of University Professors (1966) emphasizes.

Save the World on Your Own Time

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Fish
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Stanley Fish ◽  
True Purpose ◽  
The World

What should be the role of our institutions of higher education? To promote good moral character? To bring an end to racism, sexism, economic oppression, and other social ills? To foster diversity and democracy and produce responsible citizens? In Save the World On Your Own Time, Stanley Fish argues that, however laudable these goals might be, there is but one proper role for the academe in society: to advance bodies of knowledge and to equip students for doing the same. When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose. And yet professors now routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will often invoke academic freedom, but Fish suggests that academic freedom, correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job that the professor so chooses. Fish insists that a professor's only obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal." Given that hot-button issues such as Holocaust denial, free speech, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are regularly debated in classrooms across the nation, Save the World On Your Own Time is certain to spark fresh debate--and to incense both liberals and conservatives alike--about the true purpose of higher education in America.

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