What is Academic Freedom?
Daniel Gordon
Professors routinely refer to “academic freedom.” But what exactly does it mean?
In 2022, I published a book, What Is Academic Freedom? A Century of Debate, 1915 – Present. The book was published by Routledge and is also available online for free.
The book’s purpose is not to dictate what academic freedom “really” means. The book is about about how people in the USA have debated the meaning of academic freedom.
The starting point is 1915 because the American Association of University Professors was created in that year. The AAUP’s, founding document, the “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom of Tenure,” is a great starting point for understanding why there has been so much controversy over academic freedom.
The “Declaration” made it clear that academic freedom includes the freedom of professors to teach as they wish, and to conduct research autonomously. But the “Declaration” contains many ambiguities, many unresolved issues. The history of academic freedom is the playing out of these issues.
Does academic freedom extend to a professor’s non-academic writings, such as newspaper editorials?
Can a university discipline or fire a professor for injudicious language expressed off campus? Suppose the professor frequently posts racist tweets and flaunts his or her academic credentials when doing so?
What exactly is the relationship between academic freedom and freedom of speech?
Does academic freedom permit a professor to promote partisan political ideas in the classroom? How about religious preaching in the classroom?
In my book, I approach these issues through specific historical case studies.
For example, in 1969 Angela Davis was fired at UCLA. She was then a young instructor in Philosophy. She was fired for belonging to the Communist Party. In my chapter about this episode, I explain how UCLA had to reinstate Davis because Supreme Court decisions in the late 1960s protected an educator’s right to belong to revolutionary political organizations.
But then UCLA fired Davis again! This time, not for being a member of the Party but for speaking as communist in campus rallies. And this time the university won. Why? Davis stated, in her speeches, that conservative professors do not deserve academic freedom: they should not be allowed to teach. Only communists and other progressives should enjoy academic freedom, Davis provocatively suggested.
The mind-bending issue here is this: Does academic freedom protect the speech of professors who deny the right of other professors to have academic freedom based on their political views?
In the book, I trace all the arguments employed in Davis’s favor, and all the arguments against her. The Davis case elicited competing visions of academic freedom in the late 1960s. Competing visions continue to dominate the university landscape today.
There is a chapter in the book about academic boycotts. When an academic journal announces that it will not publish articles by scholars from Israel, is that an exercise of academic freedom by the editors? Or is it a violation of the academic freedom of Israeli scholars? Again, I present the arguments made on both sides.
The subject of academic freedom is complex. My primary critique of other professors these days is not that they have the “wrong” conception of academic freedom. It’s that they are not framing their ideas about academic freedom with precisioin.
Professors are often unfamiliar with the kinds of debates I discuss in the book; hence, we often don’t know how to formulate our own ideas about academic freedom in a logical and comprehensive way.
And of course there is a tendency today for professors not to be familiar with ideas that contradict their own opinions about academic freedom.
When a controversy over academic freedom arises, we should always be able to identify the precise questions in play. And we should acknowledge competing claims.
My conclusion in the book is that academic freedom is pretty clear-cut about certain matters, such as whether a biology professor has the right to choose the textbook for a course. But the meaning of academic freedom is open-ended on other matters, such as whether engaging in strident political activism in the classroom is permissible.
Because there is no exact science of academic freedom, professors in a given university have to discuss among themselves what they want academic freedom to mean.
We need to know the essential history of academic freedom and the competing schools of thought. For example, anyone weighing in on a question pertaining to academic really should know the AAUP’s 1915 “Declaration.” Once informed, professors can engage in civil dialogue and decide how they will frame some of the nuances of academic freedom in their university. (This is probably best done through the Faculty Senate.)
Because we are academics, we have a duty to approach academic freedom as a complex topic. What specific academic freedom issues are of concern to you—and are you familiar with the pros and cons of the issue?
A goal of the “Faculty for Civil Dialogue” group is to promote better understanding of our differences of opinion on campus. Not consensus but mutual comprehension. Dialogues about the meaning of academic freedom can contribute to our sense of solidarity as professors, even when disagree with each other.
Daniel Gordon is a professor of History. He was a founding faculty member of the Commonwealth Honors College in 1999; designer of the required honors seminar “Ideas that Changed the World”; and Interim Dean when the honors residential complex was opened in 2013. He is currently the editor in chief of the journal Social Science and Modern Society.