Appropriate Restraint or Unreasonable Interference?

“The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.” 

- William Orville Douglas

I've been following the half-dozen or so stories and editorials plus comments, that have appeared in the News-Gazette regarding the retirement and subsequent of denial of emeritus status to University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers.

Most recently, I read:

The UIC senate voted 52-16 to send a letter to the board of trustees this week that begins that senators are:

"Requesting that the Board of Trustees reconsider its decision to deny emeritus status for Professor William Ayers. We neither claim to speak for all faculty at UIC, nor endorse Mr. Ayers' writings or actions prior to the time he joined the UIC faculty, but our concerns are with potential detrimental implications that this decision may have" on academic freedom.

The senators continue that "by withholding this honor, for reasons other than poor performance in research, teaching and service, and in opposition to the recommendations of university administrators," the board sends a message that "political involvement and public statements made, no matter how long ago and no matter how distant from a faculty member's work, are open to investigation and can and will be used for punishing university faculty and, presumably, graduate students."

The letter adds that there are concerns that faculty and students need to "censor themselves if they hope to succeed in the scholarly community."

It appears that considerable time and attention is being paid to a person, under the auspices of academic freedom, who has arguably produced a legitimate body of work as a university professor, albeit under a cloud of controversy, to put it mildly.

It seems that Mr. Ayers, from what I have read, might have led a far more restricted life had serious charges against him not been dropped due to the FBI improperly handling this and other investigations of American activist groups. For an overview, see this entry. As usual, I apologize for pointing you at a less that scholarly source, but the Wikipedia article is as good of a stepping-off point as any I have found for this topic.

While I will keep my opinions regarding Mr. Ayers' career and causes to myself, it does pose an interesting backdrop to examine to the state of academic freedom in our colleges and universities, given it appears to be of central concern to the UIC faculty senate.

I am reminded of a presentation I was invited to give at a local civic organization on the current activities of our college. Upon finishing and asking for questions, the conversation turned suddenly and with great emotion to that of the controversy surrounding Mr. Ayers presence in Champaign-Urbana, as he was scheduled to give a lecture the following week. I was asked many times over if I thought it was right and proper, even after deferring to the wisdom of those more closely associated with the event.

Would you allow it at Parkland?

Would you ever hire such a person?

I'll confess that I was totally unprepared for this line a questioning and very new in my role as President of the College. I'm sure I mumbled some noncommittal line about free inquiry and discourse, but the truth is that I didn't know how I felt about the matter. More importantly, my feelings aside, what would the proper response be if it were to manifest on our campus?  

Subsequently, I've spent considerable time thinking about the matter and following the news stories with a little different perspective.

For the uninitiated, the term “academic freedom" generally refers to a set of privileges afforded the professoriate with the intent of protecting the ability to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. The concept originated with medieval European universities and has evolved into a slightly different interpretation in the United States.

In American colleges and universities, both public and private, academic freedom is derived from the guarantee of free speech under the First Amendment, whereas constitutions of other countries typically grant a separate right to free learning, teaching, and research.

In my read of the history, it seems that there was little organized concern with respect to the Americanized version of academic freedom prior to 1915. At that time, concern about the faculty role in college and university decision-making led to the formation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which held its first meeting in 1915 and immediately took up the task of considering how this new organization would serve university professors much the same way that the American Medical Association serves doctors and the American Bar Association serves lawyers.

Although  the AAUP addressed many professorial concerns in its early years, the most pressing (and enduring, as it turns out) concern was that of academic freedom. The AAUP issued a report in 1915 that spoke to academic freedom, but it was not until 1925 that a code of principles (the Conference Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure) was issued. 

Shortly thereafter, the AAUP agreed on a re-statement and re-issuance of the principles set out in 1925, aimed at promoting public understanding and support of academic freedom and establishing procedures to govern academic freedom in colleges and universities. It is referred to as the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and along with clarifications made in 1970, remains in place today as foundational doctrine.

In the 1940 Statement, the notion that faculty are appointed to a professorial “office” was incorporated, describing faculty as “educational officers” and “officers of an educational institution.” Furthermore, we are reminded that faculty have ethical responsibilities to both their profession and their institutions, but only the institutional matters are legally binding. In other words, deviation from ethical underpinnings may result in censure by members of the profession, but are likely not actionably from a legal standpoint. The professional autonomy and integrity of the faculty seems to  depend not at all on membership in a professional or discipline-based association, but on the terms and conditions of their institutional appointments. So says the legal profession.

The 1940 Statement provides, for example, “Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties.”

Furthermore, “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.”

Lastly, "College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline . . . As scholars and educational officers, . . . they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinion of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution."

As you can clearly read, even these most general statements of the protections afforded by academic freedom are predicated on proper professional conduct.

That's the rhetoric. Somewhere between it and real life, things get far more complicated.

Universities and colleges are unavoidably bureaucratic institutions.  They generally need budgets, policies and procedures, and facilities. Based upon mission and purpose, they are looked upon to organize and coordinate public service, grants and contracts, and most importantly, incorporate and coordinate the activities of highly trained professionals, both academic and technical.

The quality of that work and progress toward college goals depends on the presence of a shared vision, including an environment in which faculty can conduct their work on the basis of appropriate professional standards.  The whole endeavor, as is the case at Parkland College, is led by a group of elected officials that constitute a Board of Trustees.

Nonetheless, we are all, with the exception of the Trustees, considered to be state employees.

Our faculty are selected and contracted based their degrees, qualifications, and expertise, yet are not assumed to speak for the college or even other professors in the same department. And as a significant body of case law suggests, the free speech rights of the faculty are not unlimited and must be balanced with the rights of the institution.

In this context and in contrast to universities, challenges to academic freedom in the community college are usually the result of internal administrative and bureaucratic forces rather than outside pressure or controversy. Generally, there are fewer instances of controversy over publications, public lectures, or overt political positions at issue in the community college, although on occasion, a faculty member will be taken to task over a charged issue.

By and large, the community college pressures on academic freedom come from administrators (occasionally via Trustees), other faculty (with respect to curricular issues), and increasingly from students that may not understand or do not appreciate content, subject-matter, or teaching techniques of a particular professor. Recent events around Kenneth Howell, although at the university setting, illustrate the intractable nature of such matters.

At the community college, our emphasis is on teaching with only minimal to moderate attention paid to research, publication, or, public comment in particular, as was the case with William Ayers and Ward Churchill.

Our teaching-oriented faculty autonomy and integrity remains, not only because of competent instruction but because it is an essential component of competent instruction. Our students are more likely to learn to think critically and independently from faculty who do so themselves.

Secondly, there is the issue of how faculty teach, in terms of format and method. Here, the pressures on academic freedom are less overt but no less powerful. For example, the choice of an emotionally, ethically, or religiously charged topic as a prompt or theme of an introductory writing course may very well incite a student to action, easily spiraling into petitions, letters to Trustees and tactics of similar ilk.

Third, tenure decisions are often based, in part, on willingness to innovate and experiment, especially with respect to the use of technology. There is a certain degree of academic freedom that comes with being able to refine a course as one sees fit or at least to choose freely among the technologies available, yet there may exist perceived or real pressure to embrace online or hybrid methodologies due to institutional goals.

Although much attention is paid to alleged as well as real intrusions on academic freedom from the standpoint of the offended individual, there tends to be little awareness or attention paid to the constraints placed on the administration, and for good reason.

Management requires discretion and confidentiality from a legal as well as professional perspective. The accused (thankfully) have rights and due process considerations. 

Confidentiality and academic freedom co-exist tensely, at best. Most issues involve personnel matters, where confidentiality is not only prudent, but legally necessary. The result is often a claim that "the administration knows, but is covering it up” is often really “the administration knows, but can't reveal the course of action without violating confidentiality.”

As contradictory as it is, the responsibilities of administration carry a burden of prudence when it comes to public opinion as well. It would be naive to think that a university or college's leadership can arbitrarily ignore public opinion without undesirable consequences. 


That balance is the crux of the issue.

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