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NYS AAUP Committee A
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND AAUPIntroductionAcademic Freedom and the AAUP has been prepared by Irwin Yellowitz, Chair of New York Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, from a document distributed by the University Faculty Senate of the City University of New York. We thank the Chair of the CUNY University Faculty Senate, Manfred Philipp, for permission to use this document. The UFS statement was written by Lenore Beaky and Stephen Leberstein. We thank them for their permission to use their work, and for their willingness to participate in this revision of the original document. The text also has been reviewed by the members of NY Committee A, Martin Fried, Jane Koretz, Lionel Lewis and John Thomas, and they have approved it. This document will prove useful as an introduction to a complex subject. For references to further resources, see the end of the document. If you need help with an academic freedom issue, see the last paragraph of the text. New York Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure “The responsibility of the university as a whole is to the community at large, and any restriction upon the freedom of the instructor is bound to react injuriously upon the efficiency and the morale of the institution, and therefore ultimately upon the interests of the community.” What Is Academic Freedom?Academic freedom is the indispensable condition for the faculty to carry out its work: the responsibilities of teaching, research and publication, and of participating in college governance. Without the ability to control their work, faculty members will find themselves laboring under conditions closer to those of a corporation than the academy.Academic freedom is a professional right of the faculty. It is grounded in the faculty’s qualifications for the position as reviewed by their peers. It consists in the freedom to teach, research, write, and to speak in their public capacity without restraint by the administration. As a professional right, academic freedom differs from the constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment in the sense that academic freedom is the necessary condition for faculty members to fulfill their professional obligations and responsibilities as teachers, researchers and writers. Academic freedom protects faculty members from reprisals by employers for exercising free speech rights outside the classroom, a protection not afforded most Americans. Academic freedom further protects faculty members when they participate in the governance of their institutions or speak out on matters of educational policy, particularly when opposing the views of the administration. Academic freedom includes all members of the faculty. For full-time members of the faculty, tenure is the main shield against violations. However, most teaching in the United States is now done by part-time or contingent faculty not eligible for tenure. For those not protected by tenure, academic freedom is defended through specific provisions of a collective bargaining agreement or governance document, such as a faculty manual or handbook. For all faculty, academic freedom ultimately depends on its acceptance by the entirety of academe, as exemplified by the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was developed in tandem with the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities), and endorsed to date by over 200 academic and professional organizations. Academic Freedom Rests on Four PropositionsThe best traditions of higher education rest on the professional freedom of university faculty and researchers in the academy. Academic freedom is meant to conserve those traditions in order to maintain the appropriate role of colleges and universities in a democratic society.
The 1915 AAUP Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic TenureThe first statement of academic freedom by the AAUP is its 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, which sets forth a powerful and prescient rationale for academic freedom. The 1915 Declaration begins with a set of principles, addressed primarily to boards of trustees: colleges and universities “constitute a public trust. The trustees are trustees for the public.” Faculty members are appointed by trustees, but they are not the trustees’ employees: “The responsibility of the university teacher is primarily to the public itself, and to the judgment of his [or her] own profession.”Subsequently AAUP worked with the Association of American Colleges on statements of the accepted principles of academic freedom. These culminated in the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure, which is the accepted standard for the academic profession. The 1940 AAUP Statement and BeyondThe AAUP has always been careful to justify academic freedom in the context of the functions of the academy and to ground it in the due process protections that make academic freedom a reality in the lives of faculty members. The AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure states in its preamble that “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the unfettered search for truth and its free exposition.” Therefore, the 1940 Statement explains that “teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results….” Yet freedom also entails responsibilities. Thus the 1940 Statement states that faculty “should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.” Since this language could be used improperly against a faculty member, in 1970, the AAUP made clear that the wording did not permit dismissal of an instructor, unless the total record of the person demonstrated unfitness for the position. The determination of unfitness required due process, which was explicitly delineated in other AAUP documents.Despite some ambiguity, the 1940 Statement represents the view of faculty and administration that academic freedom is essential to the mission of the college or university, is protected in the areas of teaching, research and publication, and is supported by tenure. Violations must be seen as contrary to the basic principles of academic life. While academic freedom is not simply the free speech rights of university faculty, the Supreme Court has nevertheless recognized academic freedom as an important condition for the constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly to flourish in the nation as a whole. In Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), Justice Felix Frankfurter affirmed the “four essential freedoms” of a university: “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” In Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), the Court described academic freedom as “a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Regarding classroom conduct the 1940 Statement also balanced freedom and responsibility. “Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.” The caution here is placed on what is relevant to the course, a standard to be determined by the faculty, rather than on what may be regarded as “controversial.” As the AAUP put it in 1970: “The intent of this statement is not to discourage what is ‘controversial’. Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster. The passage serves to underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject.” Indeed, in today’s charged partisan atmosphere, some students may feel offended when their closely held beliefs are challenged in class. Organizations such as Students for Academic Freedom, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Campus Watch, and others which support the highly controversial “Academic Bill of Rights,” monitor colleges and universities for political purposes. Instead of encouraging students to engage in discussion, some of them have recruited students to report on their professors to administrators, trustees and legislators. When faculty fear the threat of a complaint and reprisal so much that they censor themselves to avert any controversy, then they unwittingly subvert the public mission of the academy. If professors cannot speak the truth as they understand it in their disciplines, then they are kept from doing their job and are likely to lose the respect of their students in any case. The 1940 Statement did not intend that result. However, the Statement obliges the faculty member to avoid using his or her privileged position to introduce material or personal views unrelated to the course. The AAUP’s “Freedom in the Classroom” statement in Academe (September-October 2007) responds to recent legislative efforts to mandate balance or diversity in university classrooms. To the claim that faculty “indoctrinate” students, the statement replies that “It is not indoctrination when, as a result of their research and study, instructors assert to their students that in their view particular propositions are true, even if these propositions are controversial within a discipline.” To insist upon neutral balance in the classroom “is fundamentally to misconstrue the nature of higher learning, which expects students to engage with the ideas of their professors.” Faculty however may not engage in partisan or religious proselytizing in their classrooms. They should respect their students’ opinions and encourage students to express those opinions, and should be fair and objective in assessing student work. However, while treating their students respectfully, faculty members remain responsible for the interpretation of their disciplines. The Task Force on Middle East Anthropology suggests the following steps that might be taken by faculty before a course begins: be familiar with the AAUP statements on academic freedom and with their college’s code of student conduct; distribute a syllabus with their expectations and guidelines on classroom participation and discussion; set the tone for vigorous but respectful class discussions; set up debates or small-group discussions; and consider in advance how they might handle potential hot topics or disruptive students. Shared GovernanceAs with tenure, shared governance is a buttress for academic freedom. It is another accepted principle of academic life endorsed in 1966 through a joint statement of AAUP and several organizations representing administrations and boards of trustees. Shared governance provides for the faculty’s primacy in areas that depend on its professional training and abilities. The 1966 Statement defines these as “curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status and those areas of student life that relate to the educational process.” In the area of faculty status, faculty have primary responsibility for appointment, reappointment, tenure, promotion and dismissal, and a president or board of trustees should accept faculty judgment “except in rare instances and for compelling reasons which should be stated in detail.” Faculty exercise these responsibilities through departmental, college and university committees.AAUP regards this central role of faculty in governance as “necessary for the protection of academic freedom.” Where it is absent, experience shows that there “is a potential for, and at times the actuality of, administrative imposition of penalties on improper grounds.” In support of these principles, AAUP has developed specific procedures to promote due process in academic freedom cases. Many colleges and universities have incorporated these procedures in whole, or in large part, into their handbooks and governance structures. Yet “A good governance system is no guarantee that academic freedom will flourish.” That requires not only a proper governance structure, but acceptance of academic freedom as a central principle of institutional life, and the constant vigilance of faculty, individually, and through their committees and other faculty organizations. In the absence of formally adopted department, college or university-wide policies, the faculty member retains the right to make individual academic decisions. The authority of faculty members to teach their subject is grounded in their professional qualifications as judged by the standards of their discipline and their peers. Having met those qualifications, it is therefore the right and responsibility of the faculty to determine the curricula and syllabi, to select the texts and other instructional materials, and to test and set grading standards for their courses free from pressures from college administrations, outside organizations, politicians, or the media. Where a department or faculty governance body has approved course curricula, textbooks, teaching methods, grading standards, sequences and course requirements, however, the individual faculty member is expected to follow these policies. The Academic Freedom of Contingent FacultyUnder prevailing American legal doctrine, employment is “at will” unless otherwise protected by collective bargaining agreements or civil service rules. “At will” means that an employee can be let go for “any reason, no reason at all, or a reason morally wrong.” Academic tenure was meant to set college and university faculty apart from that doctrine. But as American colleges and universities come under increasing pressure to raise private funds, and as they move toward a more corporate structure and related business practices, reliance on vulnerable contingent faculty subject to “at will” employment is rapidly increasing. Without the protection of tenure, contingent faculty, now the majority of faculty in the United States, are especially vulnerable to academic freedom violations.In light of the enormous growth in the use of contingent, mostly part-time, faculty in recent years, the AAUP in 2006 adopted new Recommended Institutional Regulations governing such contingent faculty. Essentially these Regulations extend the protection of academic freedom to contingent faculty. In response to the threat to academic freedom posed by the increasing use of contingent faculty, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) also released a statement, “Academic Freedom in the 21st Century College and University: Academic Freedom for All Faculty and Instructional Staff” (2007), forcefully arguing that the rights of academic freedom and faculty governance embrace all non-tenure track faculty and instructional staff. Violations of academic freedom come in many forms.The AAUP’s long history of investigations of academic freedom cases shows a variety of issues, almost always rooted in local circumstances, but at the same time reflective of broader types of violation. Faculty are aware of the most egregious attacks on academic freedom, in which faculty are punished for statements they made in their classroom, or in their research, writing or speech. Not all faculty are aware of less well publicized attacks on academic freedom through administrative violations of the role of faculty in the areas of curriculum and teaching, or the recruitment and evaluation of peers. Examples of these violations of academic freedom follow. While not all inclusive, they indicate major forms of violation that faculty should recognize.
How You Can Respond to Threats Against Your Academic FreedomInstitutionalDefense of academic freedom concerns violations of the rights of an individual as well as violations of proper governance. One important defense is for a faculty to establish its own academic freedom committee. A campus committee can monitor, examine and report annually to the faculty on the status of academic freedom, investigate possible violations, and address issues and make recommendations regarding academic freedom. The role of this committee should be defined clearly in the governance document of the institution. This is particularly important in possible cases of academic freedom violation. Procedures must be explicit, and should follow the AAUP’s standards.If there is a union on campus, the collective bargaining agreement should clearly state that academic freedom will be protected in the institution. The contract should provide a mechanism for handling possible violations of academic freedom, either through the established grievance procedure, or through procedures set out in the AAUP’s statements. The organization Free Exchange on Campus, a coalition including the AAUP, American Civil Liberties Union, AFT, and the United States Student Association, works to support the academic freedom of faculty and to counter political attacks on academic freedom. The AFT has set forth standards of academic freedom in teaching, research and publication, participation in institutional governance, and freedom in public life. The AFT urges faculty to protect and defend their academic freedom by initiating dialogues on campus and among policymakers and the public, as well as negotiating practices that support academic freedom and political and legislative work. PersonalIf you think that your academic freedom is under attack, or is being violated, contact your campus academic freedom committee, AAUP chapter or union promptly. If you choose to consult with AAUP, one route is through the New York Conference. See the article on the website of the New York Conference of AAU P, prepared by New York Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. It is entitled We Can Help Defend Your Academic Freedom. The website address is www.nysaaup.org, or you can phone the Executive Director of the New York Conference, Tom Policano, at 888-690-2287 or 585-719-7137. You also can bring the violation to the attention of National AAUP. The phone number is 202-737-5900, and the web site is www.aaup.org.Selected Resources
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