The ATF’s action points are sound. Several are urgent. Very few people outside of Academe understand the protections researchers and teachers need when they move into culturally, socially and politically controversial areas. Even technical and scientific fields have their mavericks. Corporate and industrial research, even at Nobel prize winning levels, is quite different. One also needs protection from threats internal to Academe. That few scholars actually come to the test is tenure’s success as well as testimony to widely shared professional standards, even in some cases a regrettable conformity. Still, while nothing like the McCarthy period is upon us, cases arise annually where the value of tenure, which is only trivially job protection, becomes quite clear. One only needs to browse awhile in the archives of The Chronicle of Higher Education to find them.

For adjuncts the problem lies in their tenuous positions. Unions committed to fighting for academic freedom, as covered in clear contracts, will help. An adjunct exploring controversial matters cannot then be fired in mid-contract for her research or teaching commitments. But what then? Serious research begins with questions, hunches, directions of inquiry; time matters; changes of direction occur, surprises arise, outcomes may be unexpected. That is why tenure protects researchers and teachers more effectively than serial contracts, unless those contracts are written in such as way as to preclude non-renewal except for “cause.” How many colleges and universities will go that route? Adjuncts mean economies and flexibility. Without economies — lower relative pay, fewer benefits or none — only flexibility remains, although that is a chimera of sorts, a drum to beat self-servingly in many cases.

John Hill, Professor at U. S. Naval Academy, at 8:45 am EDT on October 29, 2007

“Very few people outside of Academe understand the protections researchers and teachers need when they move into culturally, socially and politically controversial areas”

This is false. Identical cultural, social, and political controversies affect people who work in law, medicine, and politics, to name only a few examples.

JBM, at 9:45 am EDT on October 29, 2007

Changing Tenure

It’s always been the dilemma for advocates of academic freedom: do you try to get everyone on the tenure track, or do you try to increase the protections of faculty off the tenure track? Of course, the solution is to do both at the same time. The more protections for adjunct faculty, the less incentive a university has to get rid of tenure-track lines. I agree with the AFT that 7 years should not necessarily be the standard for tenure. For adjunct faculty, a tenure system should take only 3 or 5 years, since they are being evaluated on their teaching competence and not their research (which requires a longer trial period to demonstrate excellence). A shorter tenure period for adjuncts (similar to what unionized K-12 teachers get) would help protect academic freedom, would help adjuncts retain positions (since if their jobs were converted to traditional tenure-track positions, they might lose them), and would reduce the incentive to get rid of tenure-track faculty.

John K. Wilson, collegefreedom.org, at 11:15 am EDT on October 29, 2007

Academic freedom in developing countries

I as a pesticide environmental toxicologist in exile would like to comment on the very important issue: acdemic freedom in developing countries; About four years ago when I was leaving the university of Tehran (Iran) and my beloved country Iran I was observing: the breakdown of the whole academic system in a big country.The worst problem there was that some of supposed to be professors were adding to the problem in order to survive.

With best regards, Ahmad Mahdavi, Guelph, Ontario.biomahda@yahoo.ca

Ahmad Mahdavi, Dr at Sustainable agriculture and environment, at 12:05 pm EDT on October 29, 2007

Academic freedom, when convenient

Three years ago, while picketing in protest outside of a local Citadel of Censorship (Macomb Community College), I crossed another elderly gentleman expressing, via placard, his opinion of John Kerry, Democratic Party candidate du jour. During our brief chat, I asked this gentleman if he had heard of the English teacher chronically embroiled with College authorities over the ideas and words he employed while teaching. Yes, the gentleman said—he had vaguely heard about some jerk trying to follow his own agenda. I didn’t identify myself as the jerk in question, but I did ask him if he therefore agreed with the proposition that the State should set the agenda, as was the case in the former Soviet Union or in present day dictatorships, such as China or North Korea. The gentleman said the situations are not exactly the same. As of course they rarely are.

In America, as in every closet theocracy, there are two contradictory values touted simultaneously. One is the value of each individual, said to be created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. Under “liberty” is the idea of freedom of speech, enshrined in the First Amendment, which Congress shall not abridge. But Congress need not stoop to such transgression when another branch of government is eager to do the deed for it. I refer to the judiciary and its clever ruse called “community standards,” a powerful evisceration of any and every individual right or freedom. The whole point of the protection of the individual’s right to speak was to shield him from the crushing power of the majority, the “community.” Through its obvious shell game, the Supreme and inferior courts endorse individual freedom, except when they frequently don’t.

A similar piece of pious nonsense obtains in the academy. While asserting that the individual teacher has a right and even a duty to speak his or her mind, this is immediately qualified by insisting that every individual must exercise crowd-pleasing “responsibility.” There are, after all, “professional standards” to uphold, collegially agreed upon values that deviation from which must be warned against if suspected, and severely punished if found. Besides, if the community of professionals is derelict, the much bigger crowd outside the walls will extract its form of group therapy, group correction. If there are not judicious hangings by small cohorts, the larger, somewhat alien mass will hang them all.

This organized lack of trust, of belief in the individual’s integrity and commitment to the principles of liberal education, does now and always will engender virulent forms of hypocrisy. Zero tolerance for individuals, including the occasional maverick, reduces everyone to contemplation of the bayonet. The situation is very much like Miss Grundy making everyone stay after school when only one is suspected of violating her many rules. And this eagerness to conform is why so many holders of degrees in the liberal arts are palpable frauds. Like Meursault, I’d rather be executed by a howling mob of ignoramuses than have my throat slit by lackeys and cowards, handsomely arrayed in cap and gown.

John Bonnell, Professor of English at Macomb Comm. College, at 4:05 pm EDT on October 29, 2007

Academic Freedom

Reading the impassioned and diverse opinions expressed in these comments reinforces, in my mind, the necessity of academe doing more outreach to the public and policy leaders about why academic freedom and its importance matter. If we as educators are politically or commercially hamstrung in our freedom to express and discuss various points of view as we are doing here how can we as a society ever progress towards greater wisdom?

Jeffrey Solow, Professor of Cello at Temple university, at 8:20 pm EDT on October 30, 2007