Securing Academic Freedom–for all

Today the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has released an important statement defending academic freedom, especially on public universities.  In 2006, the Supreme Court’s Garcetti vs. Ceballos ruling held that public employees could be disciplined for speech related to their official duties.  While the ruling left space for academic freedom on college and university campuses, lower courts have not always recognized that space.  And while tenured faculty members tend to consider academic freedom sacrosanct, they make up an ever-diminishing proportion of the academic landscape.  The majority of faculty teaching today are not even on the tenure-track, and their freedom to teach and research is proscribed considerably.

The report marshals a range of AAUP-related resources about the importance of academic freedom in the classroom, and calls on AAUP chapters, faculty senates, and related bodies to defend the academic freedom of their members. So, please do visit the AAUP site.

A couple of additional points:

• Technologically-orientated readers of ProfHacker need to be particularly vigilant on questions of academic freedom.  Blogging, social networking, and other forms of contemporary technological engagement potentially range all manner of issues: On the one hand, such forms of speech blur the conventional distinctions that the AAUP-style approach preserves (between teaching/research, between official and unofficial speech, etc.).  On the other hand, they can also point up the ways in which a professor’s speech is (hopefully!) a means of investigation/conversation/critique (including self-critique)–that would vitiate claims of “indoctrination.”
• Copyright needs to be a part of this, too.  (See, for example, Lawrence Lessig’s speech this week at Educause.)
• I’ve written before about this, and still mostly believe now what I said then: When we argue for academic freedom, we should also argue for a maximalist interpretation of the first amendment for all, not just because professors.  Even restricting our discussion to higher education, on many campuses, faculty are free to challenge proposed policies in ways that staff members are not, even if the staff members are the ones most directly affected.  We need to speak up for free speech as absolutely as possible, in as many domains as possible, if we want to protect our own.

Image by flickr user fendergold / CC licensed