I am interested in what you think of academic freedom. It basically goes hand in hand with the tenure system and is set up such that once you have tenure it is very difficult to get rid of you and so you are thus free to pursue your duties for a university as you see fit and perhaps teach ideas that many might find incorrect or even offensive.
Is academic freedom important?
Have you seen it abused in your uni?
Stanley Fish has an interesting take on it that I tend to agree with. link
As a science Professor I guess I have relatively little use for it as I cannot imagine a case where I would need it other than if I were to start teaching creationism. I suppose it is nice to have but in most cases that come up it is really an abuse and in science it tends to keep around unproductive dead wood faculty.
OTOH even in science tenure used right can allow you to pursue something risky that might not work w/o having to worry about not being able to pay the mortgage if your grant doesnt get renewed.
Is academic freedom important?
Have you seen it abused in your uni?
Stanley Fish has an interesting take on it that I tend to agree with. link
As a science Professor I guess I have relatively little use for it as I cannot imagine a case where I would need it other than if I were to start teaching creationism. I suppose it is nice to have but in most cases that come up it is really an abuse and in science it tends to keep around unproductive dead wood faculty.
OTOH even in science tenure used right can allow you to pursue something risky that might not work w/o having to worry about not being able to pay the mortgage if your grant doesnt get renewed.
February 15, 2009, 8:30 pm
Are Academics Different?
Last weeks column about Denis Rancourt, a University of Ottawa professor who is facing dismissal for awarding A-plus grades to his students on the first day of class and for turning the physics course he had been assigned into a course on political activism, drew mostly negative comments.
The criticism most often voiced was that by holding Rancourt up as an example of the excesses indulged in by those who invoke academic freedom, I had committed the fallacy of generalizing from a single outlier case to the behavior of an entire class Is the Rancourt case one of a thousand such findings this year, or it the most outlandish in 10 years? (Jack, No. 88).
It may be outlandish because it is so theatrical, but one could argue, as one reader seemed to, that Rancourt carries out to its logical extreme a form of behavior many display in less dramatic ways. How about a look at the class of professors who duck their responsibilities ranging from the simple courtesies (arrival on time, prepared for meetings ) to the essentials (lack of rigor in teaching and standards ) (h.c.. ecco, No. 142). What links Rancourt and these milder versions of academic acting-out is a conviction that academic freedom confers on professors the right to order (or disorder) the workplace in any way they see fit, irrespective of the requirements of the university that employs them.
This conviction as Matthew Finkin and Robert Post have reported (in a book reviewed in an earlier column) is widespread and isnt going away. [A]cademic freedom has in recent decades increasingly come to be conceived of as an individual right to be asserted against all forms of university regulation. It may be that most of those who hold this view would stop far short of the actions performed by Rancourt, but what Finkin and Post call this antinomianism (the refusal to accept external constraints on the promptings of conscience and the inner light) is, as they say, inherently corrosive, and what it corrodes is any sense of responsibility to the institution.
The response many would make to this accusation is that a teachers responsibility is to the ideals of truth and justice and not to the parochial rules of an institution in thrall to intellectual, economic and political orthodoxies. Democracy, insists G.Tod Slone (No. 228), clearly depends on professors willing to risk career for truth and integrity. Academics, in this view, exercise freedom only when they subject the norms of the institution to a higher standard and act accordingly. They must, says mattm (No. 247), retain the right to ask the question of what constitutes academic freedom without any deference to the interests of the university whatsoever. Here, nakedly, is the reasoning I attributed to Rancourt: the university may pay my salary, provide me with a platform, benefits, students, an office, secretarial help and societal status, but I retain my right to act in disregard of its interests; indeed I am obliged by academic freedom to do so.
It would be hard to imagine another field of endeavor in which employees believe that being attentive to their employers goals and wishes is tantamount to a moral crime But this is what many (not all) academics believe, and if pressed they will support their belief by invoking a form of academic exceptionalism, the idea that while colleges and universities may bear some of the marks of places of employment work-days, promotions, salaries, vacations, meetings, etc. they are really places in which something much more rarefied than a mere job goes on. John in Boston (No. 229) declares, Your first move to say that the professor was hired to perform a job is evidence enough to prove that you dont understand education; it is not a path that leads in a certain direction, and certainly not a direction mandated by an administrative hierarchy.
One sees from this and similar statements that an understanding of academic freedom as a right unbound by the conditions of employment goes hand in hand with, and is indeed derived from, an understanding of higher education as something more than a job to be performed; rather it is a calling to be taken up and followed wherever it may lead, even if it leads to a flouting of the norms that happen to be in place in the bureaucratic spaces that house (but do not define) this exalted enterprise. If thats the kind of work you think yourself to be doing, it follows that you would think yourself free to pursue it unconstrained by external impositions; you would think of academic freedom as E. Mucemn (No. 67) thinks of it: Ultimately, academic freedom is nothing different than the freedom of human mind, as immense as the size of the universe.
The alternative is to understand academic freedom as a much more earthbound thing, as a freedom tailored to and constrained by the requirements of a particular job. And this would mean reasoning from the nature of the job to a specification of the degree of latitude those who are employed to do it can be said to enjoy. This is Finkins and Posts position: Academic freedom is not the freedom to speak or teach just as one wishes. It is the freedom to pursue the scholarly profession according to the norms and standards of that profession.
Statements like this are likely to provoke the objection that Academe should not be a Business or a Corporation (No. 228, G. Tod Sloane). But that is a fake issue. Saying that higher education has a job to do (and that the norms and standards of that job should control professorial behavior) is not the same as saying that its job is business. It is just to say that it is a job and not a sacred vocation, and that while it may differ in many ways from other jobs there is no discernible product and projects may remain uncompleted for years without negative consequences for researchers its configurations can still be ascertained (it is not something ineffable) and serve as the basis of both expectations and discipline.
So these are the two conceptions of academic freedom that are in play: academic freedom as the freedom to do the academic job (understood by reference to university norms and requirements); and academic freedom as the freedom to chart your own way, to go boldly where no man or woman has gone before, constrained only by your inner sense of what is right and true.
It is sometimes said that the grander conception of academic freedom is as large in its scope as the freedom guaranteed to citizens by the First Amendment. In fact, as the case law shows, the scope claimed is even larger. In U.S.v. Doe (1972) a researcher argued that his academic freedom rights were infringed when a federal grand jury asked him questions about his research. He claimed scholars privilege, in response to which the government said that no such privilege was to be found in the province of jurisprudence. The court agreed and declined to make scholars a uniquely privileged class. But the decision went the other way in Dow Chemical v. Allen (1982) when a court ruled that University of Wisconsin researchers could not be compelled by a subpoena to disclose notes, reports and working papers relating to a dispute about the toxicity of herbicides. The court declared that absent a compelling state interest, any such intrusion into the world of research would have the effect of chilling the exercise of academic freedom. In response, Dow contended that the First Amendment interests at stake at this case are no greater than those involved in the ordinary case of enforcement of a subpoena. That is, academics are citizens like any other and should be not treated as a different, special class. While that argument lost in Dow, it won in Wright v. Jeep (1982) when a professor asserted that he was exempt from a requirement to testify because as a researcher he had a right to refuse to give or produce evidence and a denial of this right would have a chilling effect. The court replied that the possibility of being subpoenaed to testify exists for everyone and that a professor is no different than any other witness who may be called on to give evidence.
That of course is the key question. Are academics different, and if so, in what ways, and to what extent do the differences legitimate a degree of freedom not enjoyed by the members of other professions? These and related questions were debated in Urofsky v. Gilmore (2000). In that case professors from a number of state colleges and universities in Virginia contended that their right of academic freedom was infringed by a law requiring state employers to gain permission from a supervisor before accessing sexually explicit materials on state-owned computers. Judge Wilkins, writing for the majority, treated the complaining professors as employees rather than as possessors of a special right, and observed that It cannot be doubted that in order to pursue its legitimate goals effectively, the state must have the ability to control the manner in which its employees discharge their duties. The professors had anticipated this reasoning and maintained that even if the law was valid as to the majority of state employees, it violates the First Amendment freedom rights of professors at state colleges and universities. Or, in other words, we understand the legal point, but it doesnt apply to us, for were different.
Wilkins heard this argument as a claim by professors to have a constitutional right to determine for themselves without the input of the university (and perhaps even contrary to the universitys desires) the manner in which they would pursue their scholarship and teaching. But he found no basis in law for this view, and concluded that while academic freedom may be a professional norm it represents the professions thinking about the optimal conditions required for its members to do their work it is not a constitutional right and thus it cannot be invoked or enforced in a judicial proceeding.
Chief Judge Wilkinson, concurring in the opinion but dissenting from the majoritys reasoning, disagreed. He noted the scorn with which his brethren greeted the claim of academic privilege and the assertion that professors possess a special constitutional right of academic freedom because the academy has a special contribution to make to society. Nevertheless he was unrepentant and cited the many passages in Supreme Court decisions in which paeans to academic freedom were given full voice. Wilkinson finds ample evidence in the record to persuade him that academic speech is a matter of public concern and so rises to the level of constitutional notice.
What exactly would the publics interest in academic speech be? One answer is provided by law professor J.Peter Byrne who argues in a critique of Urofsky (Journal of College and University Law, 2004) that a constitutional right of academic freedom exists not for the benefit of the professors themselves but for the good of society. Why? Because it is only in universities that a certain kind of speech serious and communal, seeking to improve the understanding flourishes. The special protection afforded to professors leaves them free to articulate and critique more knowledgeable and complex assertions in ways not possible on street corners or on television. Now I have my elitist moments, but this is a bit much. Only professors, were being told, do real thinking; other people accept whatever they hear on TV and retail popular (but uninformed) wisdom on street corners. Thus while there is no reason to extend special protections in the work-place to non-academic speech which is worthless there is a good reason to extend them to the incomparably finer utterances of the professorial class.
Once again we see that the argument for academic freedom as a right rather than as a desirable feature of professional life rests on the assertion of academic exceptionalism. What I have been trying to say is that while academic work is different its not business, its not medicine, its not politics and while the difference should be valued, academic work should not be put into a category so special that any constraints on it,whether issuing from university administrators or from the state as an employer, are regarded as sins against morality, truth and the American Way.
It should be possible to acknowledge the distinctiveness of academic work and to put in place conditions responsive to that distinctiveness without making academic work into a holy mission taken up by a superior race of beings. One can argue, for example, that since it is the job of the academy to transmit and advance knowledge, there should be no pre-emptive anointing or demonizing of any particular viewpoint or line of inquiry; not because such pre-emptings would be an assault on truth, but because they would impede the doing of the job. Free inquiry means free in relation to the goals of the enterprise, not free in the sense of being answerable to nothing.
Those who would defend academic freedom would do well to remove the halo it often wears. Stay away from big abstractions and remain tethered to work on the ground. If you say, This is the job and if we are to do it properly, these conditions must be in place, youll get a better hearing than you would if you say, Were professors and youre not, so leave us alone to do what we like.
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