Academic freedom has limits, responsibilities

From the nationwide spate of legislation targeting “critical race theory” to the recent controversy at Cal State East Bay, where crude and unscholarly claims about the “intelligence” of racial groups were included in an economics curriculum, concerns about what professors may write, teach in class or say in public are on the rise. In response, educators often claim, with justification, that their work and thoughts must be protected by “academic freedom.”

But what is “academic freedom” exactly?

For some, the term has degenerated into calls for academic license, the alleged right of individual faculty members to teach whatever and however they wish or to say whatever comes to mind, regardless of scholarly validity. For others, academic freedom comes across as a claim of privilege by a professorial elite, who wish to be insulated from public accountability.

The ease with which some professors, administrators, trustees — and even politicians — piously invoke these words even as they misrepresent their meaning demands a more coherent definition.

Like freedom of speech, academic freedom is not readily defined by ironclad rules. Instead, it emerges from the application of guiding principles, developed and modified over time.

Ever since the American Association of University Professors first elaborated the principle in 1915 and then, with the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities), in 1940 codified it, academic freedom has been understood to comprise three interconnected freedoms: freedom to conduct research and to publish the results, freedom to decide how and what to teach, and freedom from institutional discipline for public statements made by faculty members as citizens, including on topics removed from their academic expertise.

Academic freedom grants considerable scope to the consciences of individual teachers and researchers, but it functions ultimately as the collective freedom of the scholarly community to govern itself in service of the common good in a democratic society. In the classroom, this means, first of all, that instructors must avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject.

Their role is to educate, not indoctrinate. But what defines that distinction?

In a 2007 report, the American Association of University Professors argued that “indoctrination occurs when instructors assert propositions in ways that prevent students from expressing disagreement. Vigorously to assert a proposition or a viewpoint, however controversial, is to engage in argumentation and discussion — an engagement that lies at the core of academic freedom.”

Some instructors may prefer to present subjects as dispassionately and evenhandedly as possible. Others may choose to expound preferred, even contentious, theories. Freedom in the classroom applies to controversial opinions and detached agnosticism, as long as they are not presented as unchallengeable dogma.

Academic freedom does not permit instructors to punish or personally disparage a student in class or elsewhere for that student’s background or views. Moreover, instructors have a professional obligation to consider carefully where different students may draw the line between intellectual provocation and personal insult.

Still, students have no right not to have their beliefs challenged or to always be given “trigger warnings” for material that some might find objectionable. As the 2007 university professors association report put it, “Ideas that are germane to a subject under discussion in a classroom cannot be censored because a student with particular religious or political beliefs might be offended.”

Academic freedom should not be confused with free speech. Controversial, offensive or disproven ideas acceptable on social media or even in an oped may not be valid in a scholarly environment. However, when they express themselves as citizens, college and university faculty members should have the same free speech rights as anyone else, including where, as happened last year at an Iowa community college, outsiders threaten campus safety if the professor is not dismissed for views expressed on social media. Academic freedom ensures that, even in a private institution, instructors will be free of censorship or institutional discipline for their public remarks, however offensive some may find these.

In short, when objections are raised, neither the popularity of a professor’s personal opinions nor that professor’s conformity to external political criteria should matter. Academic freedom allows only proven fitness to teach and conduct research, as judged by qualified academic peers, to be considered. It guarantees to both faculty members and students the right to engage in intellectual inquiry and debate without fear of retaliation.

Henry Reichman, professor emeritus of history at Cal State East Bay, served from 2012 to 2021 as chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He is the author of “The Future of Academic Freedom” and the forthcoming “Understanding Academic Freedom,” both published by Johns Hopkins University Press.