Sulis Academic Press kindly agreed to make Chapter 12 of my new book available free for download. Chapter 12 summarizes the book’s conclusion and makes four practical suggestions for Christian Universities. I believe reading these nine pages may peek your interest enough to read the whole book. Feel free to download this chapter, read it, and pass it on to others.
I ended my previous essay by quoting a statement that I place in all my course syllabi and teased my next essay by saying, “Next Time I will unpack my syllabus statement in hopes of answering the question about the place of evangelism, catechesis and theology in the Christian college.”
The much-discussed tensions within the concept of “a Christian university” find expression also within in the idea of teaching the faith within an academic institution. An institution that presents itself to students, donors, and the public as a “Christian university” incurs an obligation both to be authentically Christian and to uphold sound academic standards. I won’t undertake here the challenge of blending these two principles together harmoniously in one institution. I work toward this end in my forthcoming book The Christian University & The Academy.
A professor teaching the faith in a Christian university must do justice to at least three major concerns:
The meaning of each of these concerns is contested and always has been. Contested or not, however, a Christian university must define the limits of what it considers true Christianity, good teaching, and sound academia. Individual professors don’t get to define these values as they wish.
At whatever level and by whatever method, professors should endeavor to present true Christianity to their students. The measure of “true” Christianity is its conformity to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles as recorded in the canonical New Testament. I will accept no substitute for this criterion. There have always been disputed questions and obscure matters on which learned and sincere Christians have disagreed. But it is very clear both in the New Testament and in the course of church history that some matters of faith, doctrine, and morality are nonnegotiable. To step outside these boundaries is to move away from orthodoxy into heresy.
In secular private and public universities, leftist politics has all but replaced liberal values and traditional subject matter. This is especially true in the humanities and social sciences but increasingly so even in the natural sciences. Christian university professors—most of whom received their graduate education in secular universities—are not immune from the temptation to use their classrooms to advocate for the social or political causes dear to them. In my experience, the ones most likely to politicize their classrooms are on the political and theological left.
After the elections of 2016 and 2024 in which evangelical Christians overwhelmingly supported Donald J. Trump for President of the United States, it is not uncommon for Christian university professors to dismiss the faith of evangelicals in very harsh terms. In the politicized Christian university classroom, students often hear barely-argued assertions that Christianity is incompatible with capitalism and most compatible with socialism, that Christians should champion radical responses to climate change, that God is always on the side of the oppressed, and other claims based on a liberationist approach to theology. (For my thoughts on Liberation Theology, see my essay of February 19, 2025: “Is Liberation Theology Christian?”)
I do not deny that Christianity has implications for the way we live in the world and that we need to reflect on these implications. But such reflection presupposes a thorough grasp of Christianity and a commitment to live according to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles. Unhappily, most contemporary students and many faculty do not possess either one. So, “Christianity” becomes an empty cypher invoked to enhance the authority of the speaker. In my view, it is unethical as well as unacademic to ask students to accept a supposed social or political implication of Christianity before they gain a thorough knowledge of Christianity itself.
The first priority, then, is to make sure that Christian university students encounter the full range of Christian teaching as presented in the Bible and the ecumenical tradition of the church.
The student bodies of the colleges I attended as an undergraduate were pretty homogeneous. Most of us were raised in Christian homes, attended church all our lives, and had a basic knowledge of the Bible. Most students lived within 250 miles of the college. There were very few international students, and I don’t recall a single Roman Catholic, adherent of a non-Christian religion, or atheist among my classmates.
This description fits very few Christian universities today. In my general studies classes I have evangelical students, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists. I have students from six continents. How do you teach the true Christian faith to such a diverse class of students? Do you design your course for the least, average, or most knowledgeable? Do you teach in a way that presupposes Christian faith or belief in God or at least openness to faith? Do you stay objective and descriptive or do you advocate for belief?
Precise answers to these questions must be decided by the teachers, given the makeup of their classes. However, I think there are some goals we must strive to achieve whatever the composition of the student body. We should want every student to learn the story told in the Bible and embodied in the historical life of the church. Even if we teach in the descriptive and objective style characteristic of academia, the Christian sources themselves present Christianity as the truth about God’s identity and purposes. So, even if professors refrain from using the rhetoric of evangelism, the claims of the Christian message will exert their persuasive power. And a Christian university professor should be happy about that.
Consider what the student with no prior knowledge of Christianity can learn: the basics of what Christianity asserts about God, creation and providence; about human nature, sin, death, and salvation; about Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the church; about what constitutes well lived human life, and about the hope for eternal life. And the student with prior knowledge of Christianity can benefit from an orderly, sympathetic, and coherent presentation of the Christian narrative and doctrine. Catechesis, then, if conducted in an academic mode, is not out of place in a Christian university classroom. In contrast, theology explores in depth the interconnections among the topics of faith. It teaches students how to justify the church’s teachings from Scripture, tradition, and reason and engage in debates with dissenting views. Theology is best reserved for advanced students who are believers and wish to learn how to teach the basics of the faith to others.
Teaching the faith in an evangelistic or catechetical way differs from teaching the faith in an academic style. But that difference is not what you might suspect. We expect the academic style to proceed rationally, to respect the freedom of the student, to delve deeply into the subject matter, and explore the subject’s connections to other subject areas. But evangelism should also appeal to listeners’ reason, respect their freedom, and address their concerns honestly. Catechesis, too, respects these values. What then makes a presentation of the faith academic?
Academic teaching accepts the obligation to avoid relying on presupposed authority. It feels an obligation to state clearly its presuppositions and axioms, present evidence for its assertions, get informed about the views of others, and argue logically for its conclusions. Though evangelism makes arguments, it is primarily proclamation and confession. Catechesis does not ask students to bow blindly to the church’s authority. It respects their rationality and freedom. Nevertheless, it focuses on explaining the details of what the church believes to those who already have faith and wish to learn more. Christian evangelistic, catechetical, and academic teaching communicate the same faith, but they do so in different ways tailored to different audiences and for different purposes.
To teach the faith academically is not at all synonymous with taking a skeptical, cynical, or ironic stance. It’s not identical with being progressive, liberal, or rationalistic. Except in extreme cases—concluding to a flat earth, holocaust denial, or soundness of phrenology—it is not the conclusions you reach but the methods you use that make for academic soundness.
In the previous essay, I posed the following question, which I left unanswered: “What about teaching the faith in the Christian college? Is it catechesis or theology or evangelism or something else?” I will address this question today.
I do not remember a time when I did not know that I would attend a Christian college. The Christian college was presented to me as a safe alternative to state colleges. Faculty at state colleges were known for ridiculing the faith of Christian students, and state-college students, away from home for the first time and unsupervised, often plunged into drunkenness and fornication and reaped the consequences. In contrast, faculty at Christian colleges were all faithful Christians and encouraged students to pursue lives of faith. Most students were raised in Christian homes and chose to attend a Christian college because of its devotion to Christianity. There they could study the Bible at a deeper level with knowledgeable Bible teachers and live in a community dominated largely by Christian ethics and worship.
I attended two Christian colleges and found them to be much as they were described to me. All the faculty were indeed Christians, and a religious mood permeated both campuses. No matter what their majors, students were required to take a Bible course every semester. We attended dorm devotionals every evening and chapel services every day. You could hear the continual buzz of theological conversations in dorm rooms, hallways, and classrooms. These two Christian colleges gathered hundreds of Christian students and faculty in one place for one purpose, and it was good for me. Indeed, it was so good for me that I set my sights on teaching in a Christian college. And for the past 36 years I have taught in a Christian university.
During my time as a student in these two Christian colleges I knew nothing about the history of the Christian college in America and very little about the history of the institutions I attended. I knew only their founding dates and founders and the names of a few of their most illustrious presidents. Later, I learned that from the colonial period until the late 19th century nearly all colleges and universities in America understood themselves to be in some sense Christian. However, from the late 19th century to about 1920, many of the older church-related colleges moved from an overtly Christian stance first to non-sectarian and then to a secular identity. At the same time, conservative Christians—sometimes called fundamentalists—established small liberal arts and Bible colleges as orthodox alternatives to liberal and secular colleges.* My alma maters, too, were founded in the early 20th century in response to the loss of the older Christian colleges to modernism. And they retained that countercultural mentality through my time there and beyond.
According to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, there are hundreds of Christian colleges in the United States and Canada and around the world. And they are quite diverse. Some are closely associated with a particular denomination and some center their identity in a confession of faith. Some require all faculty to be confessing Christians and some do not. Some require students to adhere to a Christian confession of faith and a code of conduct and some do not. Given this diversity, I cannot hope to present a one-size-fits all answer to the issue posed in the title of this essay: “Teaching the Faith in a Christian College.” Should it approach students as subjects for evangelism or catechesis or theological instruction? Below is a statement I place in all my syllabi and read to my classes on the first day of the semester. Although you can easily find out where I teach, I will not use my university’s real name. Let’s call it Misty Mountain Christian University or MMCU.
“Misty Mountain Christian University is a Christian university.”
At minimum, this assertion means that (1) most professors and staff profess and practice the Christian faith; (2) students are required to take courses that introduce them to the original, normative religious texts of Christianity—the Bible—and show how this faith has influenced the world; (3) students are allowed and encouraged to be involved in voluntary Christian activities of worship and service; (4) the University takes an affirmative stance toward Christian belief and practice. If you are a Christian, studying at MMCU gives you an opportunity to deepen your faith in an affirming climate. If you are not a Christian, studying at MMCU will give you an opportunity to understand what Christianity actually teaches and why it affirms these things as good and true.
In terms of your course of study, MMCU does not require you to be a Christian to study here. Nor does it make the quality of your grades depend on affirming Christian belief. Grades will be determined by your level of mastery of the course material and not your beliefs.
Professor Highfield is a Christian believer, thinker, and writer. This course takes an affirmative stance toward belief in God in general and Christian faith in God in particular. Nonetheless, I will respect every person even if you do not agree with my viewpoint and Christian beliefs. I ask you to treat your classmates with the same respect. The quality of your grade does not depend on agreeing with me.
This statement contains the essential features of my view of the purpose of teaching religion courses in the Christian university.
*For more of this fascinating story, see William Ringenberg, The Christian College: A History of Protestant Higher Education in America (Baker, 1984, rev. ed. 2006).
Next Time I will unpack my syllabus statement in hopes of answering the question about the place of evangelism, catechesis and theology in the Christian college.
Today I want to flesh out an idea I introduced in the previous essay: “Can Christian Scholars (and Colleges) be Academic?” Secular critics of the idea of the Christian college charge that such colleges cannot live up to the ideal of a university. As I observed in that essay, according to the reigning model of academia,
to be a real college or university, that is, to live up to the ideal of academia, the institution must not presuppose the truth of any belief. No theory, hypothesis, belief, description, method, etc., can be given privileged status. Professors must be left completely free to go wherever their minds and hearts take them and share these thoughts with students and the public.
Christian colleges and universities violate this principle by presupposing the truth of Christian faith. Hence, they are not true colleges and universities.
Notice first that the ideal of the university as articulated in the above principle is abstract. It has never been realized in any real university; nor can it be. Every real university embodies a host of value judgments, social goals, methodological principles, and truth claims. And it excludes many theories and truth claims from examination because it considers them false, immoral, irrational, or irrelevant. It seems to me that the “ideal” of a free-for-all discussion fits better in the general space of society governed by the First Amendment right of freedom of speech than in the university where speech is governed by rules far more restrictive than freedom of speech. You don’t have to possess a PhD to express your opinion on the street corner. But possessing a PhD is the minimum qualification to teach in a university classroom; and by the time students complete their PhDs they’ve already been socialized into the elite world of mainstream academia.
Second, academic critics of Christian colleges and universities make a fallacious argument. They apply an abstract ideal to Christian colleges but not to the secular university. Secular universities will not allow the geocentric theory of the universe or the idea that the earth is flat to be taught because they “know” they are false. They will not allow racist or homophobic or sexist ideas to be expressed by professors because they “know” they are immoral. The list of proscribed theories and dogmatic certainties is long. I am convinced that the real reason secular critics reject the idea of a Christian college is that they believe that Christianity is false or immoral. Or, is it that they are afraid it might be true?
Third, no university is universal. No particular university can house research professors from every discipline and study every problem. Nor can any one university create programs and employ teachers in every possible subject. Many significant problems will suffer neglect and resources will be wasted pursuing ephemeral winds of change. Universities possess limited resources and draw on a finite pool of prospective students. They compete with each other for resources, professors, and students. They vie with each other to construct the most appealing “brand.”
Fourth, the idealized principle quoted above makes it seem as if professors work in complete isolation, boldly experimenting with ideas, daring to think for themselves, having no settled opinions, and beginning every morning with a clean slate and a clear mind. This image completely misrepresents how academia really works. Professors work in disciplinary departments—chemistry, sociology, psychology, biology, history, and philosophy. And though there are always inner departmental controversies and rivalries, departments have a tendency to hire like-minded professors. It is sometimes called ideological inbreeding.
Professors also belong to national and international associations devoted to their discipline: The American Chemical Society, The Modern Language Association, The American Historical Association, and hundreds more. These societies develop professional standards and give professors a sense of identity beyond their local universities. Perhaps even more significant, every subject area is further divided into rival theories held by communities of adherents that are often called “schools of thought.” No one is just a philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, language scholar, theologian, biblical scholar, or political scientist. These subjects divide into rival theories bent on refuting each other. Some of these rival communities have existed for decades or centuries and some for over 2,400 years.
An isolated researcher, a member of no community, without adherence to a school of thought can make no progress. Progress in any field of study is marked by extending the explanatory scope of a paradigm or theory held by the community of scholars to which one belongs. People like Galileo or Newton or Einstein come along once in a century. In the meantime, thousands of scientists work out the implications and applications of their theories to new areas of experience. Mathematics, physics, and Chemistry best exemplify the possibility of progress. But every discipline taught in the university imitates these sciences insofar as it can.
Every modern university conducts its business according to this method or pretends to do so. For only in this way can a university claim to advance knowledge, provide a sound education, and therefore justify its existence.
Secular universities as institutions adhere to rules, principles, values, and certain truths that distinguish them from a gathering on a street corner, and research professors and teachers conduct their work within departments, disciplinary societies, and among rival schools of thought. There is no such thing as an uncommitted, neutral academic institution or enterprise. Academia is about testing, extending, and applying theories and paradigms that researchers believe are reliable guides to discovery and progress. Therefore, I believe I am fully justified in rejecting the secular criticisms of the idea and practice of the Christian college based on the abstract principle quoted above.
How may the existence of a Christian college or university be justified in view of the actual practice of research and teaching in American colleges and universities as I described it above? What if we think of Christianity as a “school of thought” in analogy to such philosophical schools of thought as Platonism, Stoicism, Idealism, or Empiricism? These philosophical paradigms can be, and in fact are, taught in state and private secular universities. Many philosophers who teach courses in Plato or Stoic literature argue for the truth of these philosophies in part or as a whole. Why couldn’t Christianity be taught in secular universities alongside these philosophies, some of which are very theological? As long as professors argue in rational ways and deal fairly with objections rather than merely asserting Christianity dogmatically, I can see no rational or legal objection to the practice.
Sadly, state universities appeal to the United States Supreme Court’s decisions about the First Amendment’s prohibition of government-established religion to forbid professors from arguing for the truth of Christianity. But more than that, there is a huge bias against Christianity in both state and private secular universities. Hence Christians need to establish their own colleges and universities to explore the implications and applications of their Christian faith.
The exclusion of Christian theology from academia is an important academic rationale for the existence of Christian colleges and universities.* Because of the bias against and legal restrictions on teaching Christianity as possibly true, beautiful and good in secular universities, theology has been exiled from the curriculum. In my view, this exclusion is a dereliction of duty based on animus—a betrayal of the true academic ideal. Christian colleges and universities are doing for American society what secular colleges and universities culpably neglect to do. Christian colleges and universities serve the Tens of millions of American Christians and other believers in God by seriously exploring the implications of their faith for all aspects of life and in providing an education for their children that takes their faith seriously as a truth claim. And these institutions keep alive for society as a whole a very influential and profound viewpoint on the perennial questions about the human condition.
*There are many other rationales for establishing Christian universities and colleges. I am focusing on one academic reason that secular academics should acknowledge even if they are not sympathetic.
For the past year I’ve been reading about higher education in America, about 10 books in all. I wrote blog reviews of 5 of them. Most of these books focus on secular private and state-controlled colleges and universities. Whenever they mention “denominational,” or “sectarian” schools, the clear implication—if not the explicit declaration—is that these colleges are not truly academic. Indeed, they cannot be academic, because they exempt certain religious dogmas from critical scrutiny and prohibit professors from teaching or writing anything that contradicts them. To be a real college or university, that is, to live up to the ideal of academia, the institution must not presuppose the truth of any belief. No theory, hypothesis, belief, description, method, etc., can be given privileged status. Professors must be left completely free to follow where their minds and hearts take them and share these thoughts with students and the public…and be given career-long security and a salary to do so.
I think you can see already that this ideal of academia is unworkable. It is skepticism of the most cynical kind that envisions academia as a game to be played for its own sake. If students, parents, and the government came to believe this, would they pay professors and administrators to play this game? In fact, however, the secular description of academia is a cynical ploy designed for one purpose: to make it seem irrational for a college to presuppose Christian faith, traditional morals and common sense as guiding principles. Secular colleges and universities have no intention of living up to this ideal.
The whole point of anything we might call an academy is to rise above the undisciplined and emotion-driven conversations of the street. The academy claims to be a social good because it uses time-tested and critically proven methods of assessing facts, perceiving logical coherence and causal connections, and weighing probabilities to approximate truth. And in order to carry out this process, scholars work within traditions, schools of thought and communities to work out the implications of the dominant theories. Apart from accepting well-supported theories at least provisionally, scientific progress is impossible.* The same holds true in all areas of academic research—from fine arts to history to economics. It is precisely the methodical, rational exploration of (provisionally) accepted theories that makes academia academic!
Christian scholars, colleges and universities conform to this model of academia as well as secular colleges and universities do. If you think of basic Christian doctrine in analogy to a well-supported theory, Christian scholars seek to work out the full implications of this theory in religion, theology, ethics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. Christian colleges and universities gather Christian scholars from all disciplines to work together on this grand project and to share the results of their study with students and the public.
1. But you may object that Christian colleges presuppose only one grand theory, whereas secular colleges gather scholars that presuppose many theories, which are allowed to clash. In response we might point out that secular colleges exclude many theories from consideration. Just try exploring the implications of belief in divinely revealed moral law or the resurrection of Christ at a secular university. Or try teaching a class arguing for rejection of the theory of human-caused climate change or that there are only two genders. Larry Summers was forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard just for suggesting that the disparity between the numbers of men and women in the STEM subject areas should be researched to see if it might be biologically based. Secular colleges’ and universities’ claims of neutrality and all-inclusivity are clearly disingenuous.
2. Some would object that Christian faith is not a “well-supported” theory but a set of beliefs based on faith. But this objection misses an important truth about Christianity. Christianity claims to be true. Belief in God can be supported by many lines of argument that many people find compelling. The distinctive beliefs of Christianity are based on events that it claims really happened. Christian scholars assert that Jesus Christ really lived, taught, died on a Roman cross, and three days later rose from the dead. The tomb was empty and Jesus was seen alive by many people, including Saul of Tarsus. One may argue that these beliefs are false, but note well, you have to argue that they are false! And if something is worthy of arguing about, that makes it worthy of academic study! If Christians believe that basic Christian doctrine is true, that of itself makes engaging in scholarship to explore the implications of this truth and creating an institution to facilitate that exploration an immanently reasonable (academic!) thing to do.
*This is a major conclusion of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Revolutions come along generations apart. In between, scholars work within traditions or paradigms. Kuhn calls the activity within these interim periods “normal science.”
I just finished my second reading of The Breakdown of Higher Education: How it Happened, the Damage it Does & What Can Be Done by John M. Ellis (New York: Encounter Books, 2021). I think you’d find this book illuminating even if you don’t teach in a university; many of you attended one or you may want your children to do so. If you attended a college 25 or more years ago, you may have fond memories of great teachers and classes. I certainly do. But this book will help you to see that today’s university is not the same place as the one where you or your parents received their education.
John M. Ellis gave nearly 50 years to higher education as a professor of German language and literature in three countries, spending the majority of his career at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the current president of the California chapter of the National Association of Scholars, an organization devoted to returning higher education to its traditional academic purpose. Ellis’s book does exactly what its title says it does. It documents the very sad tale of how the once great American universities, which valued reason, facts, debate, analysis, and principled critique, have been hijacked by radical politics. The chapter titles unfold the story:
1. What Do Those Near-Riots Tell Us About The State Of Higher Education?
2. Who Are The People Destroying Our Universities?
3. How Was It Possible For This To Happen?
4. Sabotaging Education For Citizenship
5. Graduates Who Know Little And Can’t Think
6. The Wretched State Of The Campuses
7. The Campus World Of Lies And Deceit
8. What Can Be Done To Restore Higher Education
If you are interested in an insider’s perspective on the sorry state of higher education in the United States, read this book. In this post I won’t attempt to summarize the book chapter-by-chapter; it’s a story best told by the author. Instead, I will quote a condensed summary of the story from the last chapter and describe Ellis’s recommendations for reform:
What have we found? Solid evidence that most students after four years on a college campus show no improvement either in ability to reason or in general knowledge; college faculties now virtually cleansed of all but left-leaning professors, and with the controlling faction being radical political activists who have neither the wish nor the ability to be genuinely academic thinkers and teachers; classrooms everywhere used for preaching the ideology of those political activists, not to teach students how to think for themselves—minds manipulated instead of minds opened; a campus atmosphere where a vicious intolerance for right-of-center opinion makes serious discussion of the issues of the day impossible; an extreme, destructive version of identity politics entrenched both in the faculty and in aggressive politicized bureaucracies; a climate of fear with respect to matters of political or social ideology throughout the campus; major damage to the prospects of upward mobility for minorities; a virtual end to teaching of the U.S. Constitution, and U.S. history no longer taught in a balanced and intelligent way but instead used to further the radicals’ war against their own society; a dominant campus ideology that is irretrievably discredited by the misery it has brought wherever it has been tried…bitter, intolerant and ignorant hatred of the social and economic system that has made this nation the most successful in the history of the world; a determined attempt to end the kind of education that transmits the knowledge and wisdom of past generations; the nation’s political climate poisoned by the hate-filled attitudes that many students absorb from their radical professors; all of this sustained by a culture of deceit at every level of the campus; and students who remain strangers to any serious and well-informed discussions about social and political matters (pp. 171-172).
Speaking from decades of experience, Ellis urges us to give up any illusions that American higher education can be reformed from within. It is so completely controlled by radical faculty activists and bureaucrats that it is impervious to rational considerations. Even the few administrators and board members who are not themselves sold out to the radical left are intimidated by rabid faculty activists or have already quit in disgust. Only external pressure can reform the universities. The power base of the radical faculty must be totally dismantled. So, how can this be done? Here are some of Ellis’s recommendations:
1. The radical faculty apparently think that state legislatures and donors will keep sending money and parents will keep sending their children and mortgaging their houses to pay tuition no matter what the faculty does. They are arrogant in their security. But if the state legislatures, pressured by public outrage, threaten to defund the beast unless it changes, parents refuse to pay tuition for political indoctrination and donors stop giving, the universities will have to listen. Tenure won’t protect you, if there is no money for your program!
2. State legislatures could abolish departments that they deem irreformable and others could be placed in “receivership” under new management to be reconstituted as genuinely academic programs.
3. The state could (and should) abolish all “studies” programs—gender studies, women’s studies, black studies, etc.—because they are by definition devoted to political ideology and activism rather than learning. They are anti-academic and deprive students of an education.
4. On an individual level, once the word is out that students cannot get an real education in the unreformed university, families may seek alternative ways to educate themselves. In other words, the monopoly of the activist university needs to be broken.
Next Time: Are Christian colleges immune from being stolen by radical activist faculty and ideological “studies” programs?
Today I continue my series on the contemporary challenges to the viability of the Christian college. In past essays I’ve focused on academic freedom. In this essay I want to explore the concept of “shared governance,” that is, faculty participation in the decisions that determine the academic quality and educational effectiveness of the college. In the literature I’ve read, academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance are held to be the mutually entailed rights that transform college teachers from employees into professionals. Apologists for the profession justify granting professional status and bestowing these three privileges on professors by appealing to their disciplinary expertise and their unique contributions to democratic society.
It should come as no surprise that even professors in Christian colleges desire such privileges. But will giving them such powers tend to preserve or erode the Christian character of the Christian college? I am a professor and have never served as an administrator or on the board of trustees of a college. I am content in my role as a thinker, teacher, and researcher. For many reasons and much bitter experience, I am very clear that the faculty is not a reliable guardian of the Christianity of a Christian college. Boards of Trustees and administrators—especially presidents—must serve as the guardians of the Christian mission of Christian colleges. That is where I am headed, but first we need to get clear on the history of the concept of “shared faculty governance.”
I will get us into this subject by reviewing, analyzing, and applying Larry G. Gerber’s The Rise & Decline of Faculty Governance: Professionalization and the Modern American University (Johns Hopkins, 2014). Gerber is a historian of twentieth-century America with a long-term interest in faculty governance and a career of involvement with the American Association of University Professors. The book contains an introduction, five core chapters, and a conclusion. Typical of history books, each chapter covers a time span marked off from the preceding and the following by a turning point of some kind. The periods are; before 1876, 1870-1920, 1920-1940, 1940-1975, and 1975 to the present.
In the Colonial era and beyond, American colleges were organized under governing boards of trustees and “strong presidents” (p. 15), a pattern that continues to exert strong influence today. Education at these colleges focused on character formation rather than “on intellectual inquiry and discovery” (p. 16). The faculty were usually younger, recent graduates headed for the ministry or another profession with no plans for a lifetime career as a professor. In 1817, Yale president Jeremiah Day took a significant step toward shared governance by inviting the Yale faculty to participate in the appointment of new faculty (p. 17). As more and more faculty studied abroad and came to see themselves as subject area experts, they began to expect more respect from administrators and boards of trustees. Under the influence of the German model of higher education, Henry P. Tappan, president of the University of Michigan, speaking before the university senate in 1861, urge that “no laws or regulations should be made without the concurrence of the faculties; and the appointive power should rest with the University Senate” (p. 21). Even into the 1870s, however, “the idea of a formal academic career was still in its infancy” (p. 25).
Between 1870 and 1920 several factors contributed to the growing professionalization of the professorate and the corresponding demand for greater faculty control over the academic aspects of the university. Over 5,000 American scholars studied in Germany between 1870 and 1900, and they returned intent on implementing the German model in American universities. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins University patterned itself on German educational principles to a great extent. The newly founded universities of Cornell and the University of Chicago as well as the older universities, Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan, competed for faculty from the best scholars available. Because of their growth in size and increasing specialization, the university department became the center of day-to-day academic life. Professors began to root their identity more in nation-wide specialty areas of study and professional organizations than in their local college or university. It was in this era that the PhD became the required credential for teaching at elite universities. Under pressure from these forces, boards of trustees and administrators began to acquiesce to professionalized faculty demands for more shared governance, academic freedom, and tenure. Gerber summarizes these changes in words that focus on academic freedom but apply to faculty shared governance:
The more rigorous and specialized postgraduate training required to become a faculty member at American’s emerging universities provided a basis for claiming both the right to, and the need for, a more robust form of academic freedom than had been known in America’s antebellum colleges. Expertise was thus a crucial component of the emerging concept of academic freedom (p. 46; emphasis added).
This era saw the founding of the American Association of University Professors, about which I have written in previous essays.
In this chapter and in the rest of the book the newly founded AAUP takes center stage. Gerber recounts the three stories of what he and the AAUP consider arbitrary and authoritarian conduct by university presidents and boards. These episodes take place at Washburn College, Clark University, and the University of California (pp. 61-65). In 1940, the AAUP’s Committee T on Place and Function of Faculties in College and University Government report highlighted four areas of concern voiced by faculty nationwide:
(1) opportunities for direct faculty communication with trustees; (2) faculty involvement in the selection of administrators (president, dean, department chair or head); faculty exercise of primary responsibility for appointing and promoting colleagues; (4) meaningful faculty participation in the budgetary process (pp. 75-76).
According to Gerber, in 1940 very few faculty in American colleges enjoyed these rights, which are clearly aspirational for the AAUP.
The years between 1940 and 1975 saw unprecedented growth in student population, public financing, and world-wide prestige in American colleges and universities. Demand for qualified professors outstripped supply. By 1973, a “consensus” had developed within higher education of “the advisability of granting faculty primary responsibility for making most academic decisions” (p. 82). One of the most significant landmarks of this era was the publication of the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, a joint statement of the AAUP, the ACE (the American Council on Education, and the AGB (the Association of Governing Boards).
Section 1 introduces the document. Section 2 deals with the “joint Effort” in which the trustees, administration, and the faculty participate jointly. These include general education policy, internal operations, and external relations. Sections 3 and 4 deal with the duties of the governing board and the president respectively. Section five lays out the scope of faculty duties and privileges:
The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process…
The faculty sets the requirements for the degrees offered in course, determines when the requirements have been met, and authorizes the president and board to grant the degrees thus achieved…
Faculty status and related matters are primarily a faculty responsibility; this area includes appointments, reappointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal. The primary responsibility of the faculty for such matters is based upon the fact that its judgment is central to general educational policy. Furthermore, scholars in a particular field or activity have the chief competence for judging the work of their colleagues; in such competence it is implicit that responsibility exists for both adverse and favorable judgments.
The chair or head of a department, who serves as the chief representative of the department within an institution, should be selected either by departmental election or by appointment following consultation with members of the department and of related departments; appointments should normally be in conformity with department members’ judgment.
Agencies for faculty participation in the government of the college or university should be established at each level where faculty responsibility is present. An agency should exist for the presentation of the views of the whole faculty.
For most of its existence the AAUP stood firmly against faculty unionization. Indeed, most faculty at elite research universities shared this rejection, because the notion of professional expertise and faculty shared governance, which focus on quality of education and the common good, seems incompatible with the self-interested goals and adversarial methods of trade unions. In 1971, however, the AAUP relented and accepted collective bargaining as one way to achieve its goals. The debate about the compatibility of the two approaches still rages within higher education.
This era saw the high watermark of faculty shared governance. But by 1975 storm clouds began to darken the horizon: the dramatic rise in the use of “contingent faculty,” the advent of the “for profit” university, and the influence of the market, consumer, and corporate model on higher education.
By the mid-1970s, the flood of students from the baby boom generation slowed to a trickle. Just as the undergraduate student population declined, a glut of new job-seeking Ph.Ds. entered the job market. States like California and Michigan that had poured money into their systems of higher education in the booming post-World War Two era reduced their support by a third. At the same time, states and the federal government imposed a huge number of new regulations, which diverted funds from professors to the ranks of new administrators, compliance officers, and support staff (p. 155).
Responses to these challenges were predictable. Cost-cutting, reorganization, competing for students by appealing to their and their parents’ immediate wants, and turning to lower-paid graduate students and other contingent faculty to teach courses. By the 2010s, when you include graduate students, 60% of teaching was done by part-time faculty (p. 147). Currently, less than one third of faculty in American colleges and universities serve in tenured or tenure-track positions (p. 9). According to Gerber, this shift amounts to the “deprofessionalization” of the faculty (pp. 146-147). Contingent faculty do not have the benefits of tenure, full academic freedom, or participation in faculty governance.
In his highly influential book, [Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983], George Keller argued that American colleges and universities faced “the specter of decline and bankruptcy” (p. 123). This crisis was brought on by a “leadership crisis,” a “breakdown of leadership” (p. 123). Governance must not be divorced from “concerns about an institution’s financial condition and future economic viability” (p. 123). Keller “criticized the effectiveness of faculty senates and the increasing tendency of faculty members to focus on their own individual interests rather than the collective well-being of the institutions in which they worked” (p. 123). According to Keller, the AAUP’s view of faculty governance was “stuck in a historical freezer” (p. 123). Every organization needs “a single authority, someone or some body of people authorized to initiate, plan, decide, manage, monitor, and punish its members” (p. 123). For colleges and universities, this authority naturally falls to the president and the board.
As we discussed above, drives to unionize college faculty seemed to many professors to be at odds with the push toward greater faculty participation in governance. This tension factored heavily in the Supreme Court case NLRB v. Yeshiva University (1980). The Yeshiva University Faculty Association appealed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for the right to represent the Yeshiva faculty in collective bargaining. Yeshiva University argued that the faculty already enjoyed a share in the governance of the University and therefore it should be considered management instead of labor. The Court agreed with Yeshiva. Private college faculty members are not eligible for collective bargaining under the rules of the NLRB; they are “managerial employees” “involved in developing and enforcing employer policy” (p. 132). This case effectively ended efforts to establish collective bargaining at private colleges and universities in America.
The rise of for-profit colleges and universities (e.g. University of Phoenix), which hire mostly part-time faculty to teach administratively designed curricula, is a huge thread to shared governance and to the ideal of a liberal arts university, which views education to be a service to the common good (pp. 145-146).
To make adapting to changing economic circumstances easier, some administrators wish to shift tenure from being a university-wide status to applying only to a department (p. 153). Should a department prove economically unviable and become subject to reduction or closure, tenure will not protect a faculty member from being released. In another development weakening tenure, and consequently academic freedom, most universities now require tenured faculty to undergo periodic post-tenure reviews.
Recently, the Association of Governing Boards, which joined the AAUP and the American Council on Education in the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, retreated from full-throated support of faculty shared governance (pp. 155-156 ff). The AGB’s 1998 Statement on Board Responsibility for Institutional Governance, lamented “academia’s appetite for the kind of excessive consultation that can bring the institution to a standstill” (p. 156). The Statement calls for giving greater authority to the president to reshape the university in situations wherein changes must be made rapidly.
In his conclusion Gerber again laments the “commercialization” of higher education and the threat it poses to “the validity of ideal professionalism—and ideal premised on the possibility of individuals using their expertise in a disinterested way to advance the common good” (p. 165-166). In a final call to action, Gerber urges
If any group is to take the lead in standing up for academic values and the importance of a liberal education and trying to prevent the further degradation of the quality and narrowing of purpose of our colleges and universities, it must be the faculty, who must reassert their commitment to a broad conception of their professional rights and responsibilities…The practice of shared governance that developed in American colleges and universities were thus not simply a privilege and perquisite of the professorate; they were a necessary condition for the development of a system of education that became the envy of the rest of the world. Reinvigorating the practices of shared governance on American college and university campuses will be critical if the United States is to maintain its position of global leadership in higher education (pp. 169-170).
Next Time: How does the concept of “shared governance” apply to Christian colleges?
In this post, I will follow up on my previous essay of January 13, 2025, “Can Christian Colleges Survive.” In that essay, I reviewed and responded to a new book by David Rabban: Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard, 2024). I want now to explore a connection I noticed when reading Rabban’s book, that is, the connection among the State of New Hampshire’s rationale for rewriting the Dartmouth College charter, the American Association of University Professors’ rationale for asserting its theory of academic freedom, and David Rabban’s argument for making academic freedom a First Amendment right.
As with the earlier post, I hope you will read it and pass it on to other interested parties, especially to trustees, administrators, and faculty in Christian colleges.
Legally, there were two issues in this case: (1) Is Dartmouth’s charter (1769) a “contract” under the “impairment of contracts” clause of the US Constitution (Art. I. 10. 1); and if so, (2) did the NH legislature “impair” said contract in its 1816 legislation changing the charter of the college?
In its legal defense of the legislation, New Hampshire denied that Dartmouth’s charter is a contract subject to constitutional protection or that the legislature impaired the “contract” through its action. The Trustees argued in the affirmative in both cases. In this essay, however, I want to focus not on the legal but on the moral/social utilitarian arguments made by the NH legislature to justify the legislation.
The NH legislature argued that the Dartmouth charter was granted for the public good, therefore Dartmouth is a public institution and falls under the authority of the state of NH to regulate matters involving public welfare. The first paragraph of the New Hampshire law in question reads as follows:
WHEREAS knowledge and learning generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government, and extending the opportunities and advantages of education is highly conducive to promote this end, and by the constitution it is made the duty of the legislators and magistrates, to cherish the interests of literature, and the sciences, and all seminaries established for their advancement—and as the college of the State may, in the opinion of the legislature be rendered more extensively useful ; Therefore…(p. 539).
Then follows a series of changes that amount to confiscation of the college by the State of New Hampshire.
Daniel Webster presented the case for the Trustees against the State of New Hampshire. Webster refutes the idea that a contract among private parties to carry out education and other works advantageous to the general public makes an institution a public institution in the legal sense. Webster emphasizes this point over and over in different contexts:
The granting of the corporation is but making the trust perpetual, and does not alter the nature of the charity. The very object sought in obtaining such charter, and in giving property to such a corporation, is to make and keep it private property, and to clothe it with all the security and inviolability of private property. The intent is; that there shall be a legal private ownership, and that the legal owners shall maintain and protect the property, for the benefit of those for whose use it was designed. Whoever endowed the public? Whoever appointed a legislature to administer his charity? Or who ever heard, before, that a gift to a College, or Hospital, or an Asylum, was, in reality, nothing but a gift to the State? (p. 574).
…
The case before the Court is not of ordinary importance, nor of everyday occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have flourished, hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and useful to the Community. They have all a common principle of existence, the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most dangerous experiment, to hold these institutions subject to the rise and fall of popular parties, and the fluctuations of political opinions. If the franchise may be at any time taken away, or impaired, the property also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for the contention of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither remote nor possible only. They are certain and immediate (pp. 598-99).
In sum, Webster’s point is this: charitable institutions (a college in this case) aim to benefit the public. The state has an interest in promoting the public good. But this overlapping interest does not give the state a legal right to assert control and manage the institution.
Mr. Joseph Hopkinson, Webster’s co-counsel, drives the same point home quite vigorously:
It is true, that a college, in a popular sense, is a public institution, because its uses are public, and its benefits may be enjoyed by all who choose to enjoy them. But in a legal and technical sense, they are not public institutions, but private charities. Corporations may, therefore, be very well said to be for public use, of which the property and privileges are yet private. Indeed, there may be supposed to be an ultimate reference to the public good, in granting all charters of incorporation; but this does not change the property from private to public. If the property of this corporation be public property, that is, property belonging to the State, when did it become so? It was once private property; when was it surrendered to the public? The object in obtaining the charter, was not surely to transfer the property to the public, but to secure it forever in the hands of those with whom the original owners saw fit to entrust it (pp. 616-617).
Chief Justice Marshall writes for the Supreme Court in its decision favoring the Trustees of Dartmouth College against Woodward. In his carefully reasoned opinion, Justice Marshall argues that the New Hampshire legislature violated the US constitution’s stricture against the impairment of contracts. Dartmouth is a private charitable institution and not a public institution subject to state control:
That education is an object of national concern, and a proper subject of legislation, all admit. That there may be an institution founded by government, and placed entirely under its immediate control, the officers of which would be public officers, amenable exclusively to government, none will deny. But is Dartmouth College such an institution? Is education altogether in the hands of government? Does every teacher of youth become a public officer, and do donations for the purpose of education necessarily become public property, so far that the will of the legislature, not the will of the donor, becomes the law of the donation? These questions are of serious ‘moment to society, and deserve to be well considered. (p. 634).
Marshall concludes:
But the Court has deemed it unnecessary to investigate this particular point, being of opinion, on general principles, that in these private eleemosynary institutions, the body corporate, as possessing the whole legal and equitable interest, and completely representing the donors, for the purpose of executing the trust, has rights which are protected by the constitution.
It results from this opinion, that the acts of the legislature of New-Hampshire, which are stated in the special verdict found in this cause, are repugnant to the constitution of the United States; and that the judgment on this special verdict ought to have been for the plaintiffs. The judgment of the State Court must, therefore, be reversed (p. 654).
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward for the freedom of private institutions to conduct their business free from state interference. And as we shall see, the principle established in this case is still of great importance today. The insidious logic of the NH legislature is still being employed—under different guises to be sure—to reduce the autonomy of private non-sectarian and Christian colleges. And Daniel Webster’s argument and Justice Marshall’s decision are still the most potent responses to a government’s assertion of a right to control higher education in private colleges.
In the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 “Declaration on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” we meet again, I shall argue, the NH equivocation between the word “public” used to mean “people in general” and to mean “publicly owned and governmentally controlled.” The Declaration argues that institutions that call themselves colleges and claim to promote the public good are “public trusts” and must therefore accept a definition of academic freedom and tenure commensurate with their self-incurred obligation to serve the good of the public as a whole. That is to say, a college’s claim to promote the good of society obligates it to adopt a non-sectarian stance. Like the State of New Hampshire of 1816, the Declaration imposes its own definition of the “public good” on all institutions that lay claim to the title of college or university. All other ways of serving the public are “proprietary” (“private trusts”), not true universities. The Declaration does not argue that a college’s claim to promote the common good places it within the sphere of direct state control (as in the Dartmouth case). It asserts, rather, that “proprietary” colleges are not truly academic institutions and that their claims to benefit the public, and therefore to be worthy of public support, are misleading or false:
Trustees of such universities or colleges have no moral right to bind the reason or the conscience of any professor. All claim to such right is waived by the appeal to the general public for contributions and for moral support in the maintenance, not of a propaganda, but of a non-partisan institution of learning.
Colleges that do not acknowledge “unfettered” academic freedom are not truly academic, not truly a benefit to the public; they are second rate at best.
The Declaration argues that any college that claims to benefit society at large and appeals to members of the public for support is a “public trust” and therefore must become truly “non-partisan” and free from all religious, political, or commercial interests. Hence it must allow unfettered academic freedom to its professors. This is the same argument made by the New Hampshire legislature for its right to confiscate Dartmouth college and rejected by the Marshall Supreme Court. However, in this instance the argument is used not by a state to justify confiscating private colleges, but by an elite professorial class to discredit, intimidate, and shame colleges founded to serve the church or other private causes.
David Rabban in Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right,** intensifies the AAUP’s argument outlined above and transforms academic freedom from a professional norm into a First Amendment right, thus justifying (like NH in the Dartmouth Case) the intrusion of the government into the heart of the university–private as well as state owned .
As I documented in the previous essay,** Rabban argues (1) that the public benefit generated by professors justifies protecting their academic speech as a special First Amendment right; and (2) that since 1957 the Supreme Court has steadily moved toward asserting a First Amendment right of academic freedom.
Without explicitly saying so, Rabban in effect argues that the claim by a college to be an institution of higher learning that provides a good to the public and employs “professors” to function in this role should come under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment. Clearly, Rabban resurrects the utilitarian/quasi-legal reasoning used in the New Hampshire legislature’s legislation in the 1816 takeover of Dartmouth college. Professors, precisely as members of the professorate, Rabban argues, should have the constitutionally protected right of academic freedom against state or institutional abridgment.
The academic speech of individual professors, no matter where they teach, has become legally protected speech as long as it is truly “academic,” which determination must be made solely by the professorial community. Whether or not a professor’s speech is academic cannot be decided by trustees, judges or administrators. Therefore, the authority to regulate professorial expression has been transferred from the trustees of the college to the government, specifically the US government. States may also decide independently to give academic freedom special state constitutional protection.
This theory aims to achieve what the New Hampshire legislature attempted to achieve in Trustees v. Woodward. However, instead of taking a top-down approach, using the sovereign power of the state, opponents of private institutional autonomy start from the bottom, pitting individual professorial constitutional rights against state legislatures and college trustees. By freeing professors from responsibility to the trustees in the use of their “academic” speech, the profession, backed up by the federal courts, takes control of the core activity of the college. It’s a kind of nationalization of a college’s faculty backed up by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Academically, it levels or homogenizes all colleges and universities in the US.
In other words, treating academic freedom as a special First Amendment right accomplishes what the NH legislature attempted to do to Dartmouth in 1816 and failed to accomplish. But instead of handing control to state legislatures, it places it in the hands of the federal courts. It gives constitutional backing to the AAUP Declaration’s utilitarian and moral arguments.
*This hyperlink takes you to the complete, 199-page record of the case, including the original 1767 charter, the full texts of the 1816 New Hampshire law taking over Dartmouth college, the arguments of the plaintiff (Trustees of Dartmouth College) and the defendant (Woodward, New Hampshire’s recently appointed treasure of Dartmouth University), and Chief Justice Marshall’s decision.
**See my previous post “Can Christian Colleges Survive” (January 13, 2025).
This post consists of a review and response to David M. Rabban, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press, 2024). PP. 369.
From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 to today, higher education has been of huge concern to American society. And until a hundred and twenty-five years ago, most colleges were connected to the church and in one way or another promoted Christianity. Over the course of the past century, however, colleges and universities have disengaged first from orthodox Christianity to adopt liberal Christianity, then on to promoting rationalistic secularity. Now the postmodern university as an institution no longer pursues truth, quests for knowledge, believes in humanity, or possesses a vision of the good. It’s about the quest for power through ideology and social activism. As I said in a previous post, a university that no longer believes in truth no longer believes in itself. It is lost. Students leave knowing less than when they arrived.
In my view, now more than ever, from a social point of view as well as a religious point of view, we need Christian colleges and universities. These institutions may be, along with the church, among the last refuges of belief in the objective reality of the good, true, and beautiful. Now is not the time for Christian colleges to give up their faith and assimilate to the already lost cause of the secular/postmodern university. And this is the reason I have written so much about academic freedom and other higher education topics on this blog.
This “review and response” is longer than my usual posts, and not everyone will wish to work through it in one sitting. But if you are interested in the future of the Christian college, I hope you will read it and pass it on to other interested parties…especially trustees, administrators, and faculty in Christian colleges.
Review
Rabban traces the transformation of academic freedom from a generally accepted professional norm without a special legal grounding to a First Amendment right. In its 1819 decision in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the Supreme Court adjudicated the case through the “impairments of contracts” clause of the US Constitution (Art. I. 10. 1). In the late nineteenth century, the Court used the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a doctrinal basis in some cases, but from 1957 onward it has increasingly used the First Amendment (Sweezy v. New Hampshire). Though in the 1960s, the Supreme Court identified academic freedom as “a special concern of the First Amendment” (Justice Brennen in Keyishian v. Board of Regents), Rabban notes that the Supreme Court has yet to clarify and elaborate its meaning. Because of its unsettled status, “judges sometimes refer to the First Amendment right of academic freedom, sometimes to the First Amendment generally, sometimes to employee-speech jurisprudence, and sometimes to all three simultaneously without differentiating them” (p. 301). Rabban writes this book to clarify this confusion and establish academic freedom as a special First Amendment right.
The AAUP’s 1915 “Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” set forth a definition of “academic freedom” that is still used today. Academic freedom concerns the professional necessity for professors to research, write, and teach within their academic expertise (and only that expertise) without hindrance from within or without the university. This special freedom given to professors is justified, the Declaration contended, because it serves the advancement of knowledge and the common good of society. The question of what qualifies as “academic speech” must be settled by one’s peers, not administrators, board members, or judges.
The most famous case dealing with higher education is that of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819). This case established the distinction between public and private corporations, limiting state actions in relation to the latter. In Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Kentucky state supreme court’s decision affirming the state’s right to forbid Berea College from conducting classes with blacks and whites together. Though the Court dealt with the case under the “impairments of contract” clause of the US Constitution, it denied that Kentucky had in fact violated that clause. Justice Harlan’s dissent, in contrast, relied on the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.
Rabban introduces the chapter with these words, noting a decisive shift in the jurisprudence of academic freedom from conflicts between state and the trustees to the relationship between the state and professors.
Whereas the 1915 Declaration focused on the relationship of professors to trustees, and the earlier application of the Constitution to the university under the impairment of contracts clause focused on the relationship of the state to the trustees, these cases focused on the relationship of the state to professors (p. 52).
Many of the cases of the 1950s and 1960s dealt with the perceived threat of communist infiltration of American universities.
The first mention of “academic freedom” in a Supreme Court case was a dissent by Justice Douglas in Adler v. Board of Education (1952). The first Supreme Court decision in which the majority opinion included academic freedom within First Amendment rights was Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 1957. Chief Justice Warren wrote for the majority. Justice Frankfurter wrote a concurring opinion that speaks of “the dependence of a free society on free universities” (p. 69). Frankfurter (quoting a document written by a South African group of scholars in protest of apartheid) lists four freedoms essential to a university: “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study” (p. 69). This list of freedoms was quoted many times in the subsequent history of Supreme Court and lower court academic freedom cases. In Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), Justice Brennan “identified academic freedom as a First Amendment right more clearly than had any previous opinion” (p. 76). “Sweezy and Keyishian soon became the starting point for judicial analysis of academic freedom as a First Amendment right” (p. 80).
Rabban puts his finger on the most serious difficulty that arises with giving academic freedom First Amendment status:
Differentiation [between academic freedom as a special and others as general First Amendment rights] would require confronting the argument that a distinctive First Amendment right of academic freedom protects professors more than general First Amendment rights protect everybody else and more than employee-speech jurisprudence protects other public employees (p. 99).
Indeed, this argument was raised as an objection to a special right of academic freedom in a fourth circuit court case, Urofsky v. Gilmore (2000).
In every area of professorial expression (teaching research, publication, intramural speech, etc.), the decisive question about the applicability of academic freedom is whether or not such expression is “academic” and falls within the professional expertise of the professor. Of course, as Rabban discusses later, universities have the institutional academic freedom to determine the curriculum, areas of study, majors offered, budgets, and many other academic aspects of the university. Disputes about extramural speech do not usually fall under academic freedom; they are usually dealt with under general First Amendment jurisprudence.
In his conclusion to this chapter Rabban summarizes the status of the First Amendment right to academic freedom:
As in the cases through Keyishian, the Supreme Court continued to base its decisions on other doctrines even when it recognized and extolled the First Amendment right of academic freedom. But many lower-court decisions relied on this right as the doctrinal vehicle for analyzing and resolving concrete disputes…they generally agreed that the First Amendment right of academic freedom protects the academic content of scholarship and teaching (p. 111).
As we noted in the above quote, even though the courts recognize a First Amendment right of academic freedom, they have not used this doctrine as the basis of their decisions. Instead, they use general First Amendment principles or employee-speech jurisprudence as the doctrinal basis for deciding cases that could have been treated under the First Amendment right of academic freedom.
In cases applying employee-speech jurisprudence, which protects speech by public employees only if it is about a matter of public concern and is not made pursuant to official duties, judges have evaluated whether speech fits within these categories (p. 113).
Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) differentiated for the first time the distinction between the government’s regulation of speech as an employer over employees from its regulation of the speech of citizens in general. It differentiates between “a citizen in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees” (p. 120). Connick v. Meyers (1983) “narrowed the concept of public concern” to avoid a proliferation of constitutional cases. In Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), the Supreme Court limited protections for government-employee speech by excluding speech that pertains to their “official duties” (p. 121).
Highfield Observation: clearly employee-speech jurisprudence does not conform to the professional norm of academic freedom, because academic freedom must cover speech delivered in the course of carrying out the professor’s official duty.
In this chapter, Rabban attempts to show that the only way to do justice to academic freedom is to differentiate it from the general First Amendment right to citizen free speech and employee-speech jurisprudence. The general First Amendment right of free speech is too broad to do justice to the special circumstances of the professorate; it is “egalitarian and individualistic” whereas academic speech is “meritocratic and communitarian” (p. 139). Employee-speech rights are limited at the very place where academic freedom is needed most. Rabban draws on the 1915 AAUP Declaration in crafting his justification for giving professorial academic speech a special status: (1) Professors cannot perform their socially important function, at the heart of their duties, without freedom to teach and write their academic discoveries and theories without hindrance. 2. Academic peers and co-experts alone should determine whether a disputed instance of professor speech is indeed “academic.”
Rabban summarizes crisply:
The distinctive First Amendment theory of academic freedom I propose is justified by the societal value of protecting the expert academic speech of professors whose boundaries are determined through peer review (p. 168).
Highfield Observation: Here we encounter the decisive issues in dealing with academic freedom questions. What counts as “academic” and who decides? Answer: “Academic” is whatever peer professors decide it is. Question: who are these peers? And what academic community are we speaking of and who selects them? These issues become decisive when dealing with academic freedom in Christian higher education. And combined with the institutional side of the equation (institutional academic freedom, the established distinction between private and public, the First Amendment rights of association and religion, institutional autonomy, etc.), it is central to defining academic freedom in a Christian school.
In the 1970s, the Supreme Court extended First Amendment protection of academic freedom to universities as institutions. This extension was anticipated by Justice Frankfurter’s enumeration in Sweeezy (1957) of the right of the university “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study” (p. 171). This list of institutional academic freedom rights forms the basis of the Court’s recent thinking on institutional academic freedom.
In this chapter, Rabban reviews cases in which universities “have asserted their institutional academic freedom to evaluate students and faculty, to regulate scholarship and teaching, and to resist interference from the state” (p. 172). In the famous University of California v. Bakke case (1978), the Court invalidated (by a 5 to 4 margin) the university’s affirmative action program at its medical school. Justice Powell provided the 5th vote for the majority but disagreed with the reasoning of both parties (14th Amendment versus statutory law). Powell recognized [drawing on Frankfurter in Sweezy: “who may be admitted to study”] that a “First Amendment right of institutional academic freedom was the only legal basis for his support of affirmative action for universities” (p. 174).
In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice O’Connor drew on Powell’s brief in Bakke to justify the use of race as a factor in college admissions at the University of Michigan. However, O’Conner used the term “educational autonomy” instead of institutional academic freedom. In his dissent, Justice Thomas argued that the First Amendment does not “authorize a university to do what would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause.” (p. 178). In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), the Supreme Court invalidated Harvard’s use of race as a factor in student admissions on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, a belated victory for Justice Thomas.
As the cases within the last half century demonstrate, institutional academic freedom (or educational autonomy) and professor academic freedom can conflict; and those conflicts are not easily resolved. In truly academic matters universities may assert many rights against state encroachment and in the broad academic policies (qualities required for appointment and tenure, courses of study, etc.), individual professors do not have an unlimited academic right to do whatever they like, even if it could be construed as an academic judgment.
After examining cases wherein institutional academic freedom came under scrutiny, Rabban concludes,
Through numerous decisions about educational issues as well as by protecting the academic freedom of their faculties, universities foster the production and dissemination of knowledge and the education in democratic citizenship that justify First Amendment protection for academic freedom. To qualify for the protection of institutional academic freedom, universities must demonstrate that they have based a decision on educational considerations related to these First Amendment interests. This demonstration depends on convincing evidence that the person or group assessing educational considerations on behalf of the university has sufficient expertise to do so. Assessment of academic quality is the primary responsibility of the faculty, whereas the administration and governing board have a major role in the development of general educational policies…the state may have more legitimate interests in regulating public universities than private ones. To this extent, public universities have less institutional academic freedom (p. 230).
Highfield Observation: Rabban focuses almost totally on public universities. He admits that private universities have more institutional academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) than public ones. He does not attempt to delineate how that greater freedom may be exercised in contrast to state-established universities. Also, he focuses on “academic” institutional freedom and the procedural limits this focus places on universities. But “institutional autonomy,” which includes, but is a broader concept than, institutional academic freedom, may be a better category to protect private, and especially religious colleges, from state encroachment and assertions of professorial academic freedom against the general aims and philosophy of the institution. The reason for this preference is simple. According to Rabban, all things “academic” must be judged so by the faculty. Within this theory, universities possess “institutional academic freedom” only insofar as it facilitates and protects faculty academic freedom. There are no theoretical grounds for the university administration, board, or the state legislature to challenge the faculty’s “academic” judgments.
This chapter focuses on recent controversies over offensive speech on college campuses. May universities create and enforce speech codes censuring hate speech and other forms of offensive expression? Generally, the courts have not upheld university speech codes unless they track with general First Amendment free speech jurisprudence, that is, they limit only speech that fails the “imminent lawless action” test: threats of violence, “fighting words,” etc. And yet, the context of a university as an educational institution places additional restraints on speech. Some speech that would be lawful to utter in the public square would not be appropriate in the classroom. According to Rabban, however, even “offensive” speech should be allowed if it serves a bona fides educational purpose. As an example, a classroom reading from The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn might include the word “nigger.” Rabban argues that teachers should not be compelled to substitute “N-word” for nigger. Institutional academic freedom allows universities more regulation of speech than the government can impose in the public sphere, but it must serve an academic and educational purpose. As one can imagine, there is much danger of subjectivity in defining what speech serves an educational purpose and what speech serves no educational purpose.
The academic freedom claims of individual professors may conflict with academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) claims of universities. These cases often turn on the academic merit of a professor’s research or teaching. The institution’s educational policies outweigh a professor’s academic freedom claims. Abusive, disruptive or “vitriolic attacks” of professors against the administration, for example, are not covered by academic freedom (See Johnson v. Lincoln University 1985). Rabban continues,
Several [cases] concluded that a university cannot balance the loss of funding or other support from a state legislature, alumni, or the public against a professor’s controversial expression on matters of public concern (p. 253; for a list of cases, see fn. 16, p. 353).
Most judges are rightly hesitant to weigh in on the academic or educational merit of an academic freedom claim. But they are free to examine whether or not the parties adhered to the proper procedures or acted in good faith. Judges should rely on peer review for judging academic merit.
With reference to the justification of student academic freedom, Rabban argues,
The societal value of the student interest in learning provides a plausible justification for a distinctive theory of student academic freedom. The student interest in learning, while different from the general rights of free speech, promotes the broadly recognized First Amendment values of disseminating knowledge and promoting democratic citizenship (p. 282).
Student academic freedom differs from professorial academic freedom:
Whereas the protection of expert speech that justified academic freedom for faculty does not extend to political expression beyond this expertise, the exercise of political speech by students in extracurricular activities contributes to the learning process that justifies their academic freedom (p. 283).
Student academic freedom covers “student interests in access to knowledge, in disagreeing with the views of their professors, and in fair evaluation” (p. 297).
Response
What is the distinction between a theory of academic freedom as a First Amendment right and academic freedom as a professional norm? As a professional norm, the academic freedom of professors, colleges, and students is justified the same way other professional norms are justified, that is, the norm inheres in the definition and practice of the profession. The essence of the profession of professor is to think, research, teach, and disseminate knowledge. Subservience to alien authorities within or without the university would redefine the nature of the professorate as a mere mouthpiece of these other parties.
But why define the professorate in a way that includes this type of academic freedom within its definition? According to Rabban, in reliance on the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration, the professorate performs an important service to democratic and progressive society. It serves to advance scientific knowledge and create an informed and critical citizenry. That is to say, its function is to challenge the status quo with a view to progress in all areas of life. To do this effectively, the professorate and the university must be protected from reactionary and conservative forces invested in maintaining the status quo.
However, as a professional norm, an assertion of academic freedom possesses no legal force. It depends on persuasion and soft coercion for its enforcement. It persuades by appealing to the nature of the profession and its service to society. It coerces through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and rewards and punishments that operate under the control of the profession as represented by the most prestigious universities and the most celebrated professors. This professional elite institutionalizes itself in learned societies, journals, publishers, accrediting bodies, and such advocacy groups as the AAUP and the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Still, academic freedom as a professional norm possesses no legal force, and as we saw in Rabban, most court cases involving censorship or punishment of professorial expression were adjudicated on other grounds, the “impairment of contracts” clause, the “equal protection” clause, or general First Amendment rights.
Rabban, the AAUP, and other legal scholars want the Supreme Court to recognize and clarify a special First Amendment right of academic freedom. This change would add constitutional force to the profession’s methods of enforcement, which at present are limited to persuasion and soft-coercion. It would give the professorate and individual professors the constitutional right to speak freely in the course of performing their professional duties, without censorship, threats or punishments on all academic matters within their expertise. Clearly, making academic freedom a constitutional right would provide more protection for the professorate than other legal doctrines. Within the narrow sphere of their role as professor and within their expertise, it would allow the courts to treat the activities of professors not merely as those of citizens or employees but as those of professors. Within this sphere, the work of professors would be constitutionally protected from censorship, punishment, or threats of the same from within or without the university.
As the above analysis demonstrates treating academic freedom as a special First Amendment right would give professors more protection than would other legal doctrines. But unlike other legal doctrines that have been applied to disputes about academic freedom, this doctrine focuses only on actions that qualify as “academic” and fall within the expertise of the professor. Who decides what speech qualifies as “academic” and falls within the expertise of a professor? Judges cannot make this determination. According to Rabban, this question must be decided by the professor’s peers. In effect, “academic” means whatever a group of peer professors say it means. That is to say, Rabban provides no substantive definition of “academic” speech. To complicate matters even more, we must also ask who qualifies as a peer and who selects this group of peers?
One has to ask why our society would tolerate a profession that demands freedom to exercise its “academic” expertise as it pleases and to be recognized as the sole arbiter of what counts as academic? Isn’t that rather circular? Must society simply trust that the profession as a whole will disregard its narrow self-interests and do the right thing? Moreover, the profession now wishes to have its demands declared special constitutional rights designed just for it. Why would citizens, state legislators, alumni, and donors continue to support such a profession and the institutions within which they work? Will they not demand some say about what counts as worthy of the designation “academic”? Who, then, will guard the guardians?
The demand that academic freedom be treated as a First Amendment right becomes exponentially troubling from the perspective of the Christian college. In fact, it spells the end of Christian colleges. For, if professors who teach in Christian colleges possess the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to teach and write whatever their disciplinary peers judge to be “academic” and within the expertise of the professors in question, the college’s freedom to carry out its Christian educational mission will be trumped by the consensus of the profession and the courts. Professors in Christian colleges would be free to deny and refute cardinal Christian doctrines and basic Christian moral teaching. Indeed, no one could hinder them from teaching atheism, agnosticism, moral relativism or any other view that peers in their discipline considered of “academic” merit. The Christian college’s legitimacy is denied not only by imposition of elite professional norms but also as a matter of constitutional law!
Hence, I reject Rabban’s conclusion on both social/political and Christian grounds.
The plausibility of the theory of academic freedom articulated in the AAUP Declaration, defended and expanded by Rabban depends on accepting its interpretation of three foundational concepts. And these interpretations, I shall argue, are tendentious and disputable.
1. The Profession. The definition of the profession of professor in the AAUP Declaration omits the socially important task of explaining and defending the wisdom of the past in favor of criticism and discovery of new knowledge. The “professional” college teacher must teach students to be critical of the status quo and become more progressive in their thinking. Apparently, there is no place in the profession for conservatives and traditionalists. This is a narrow and elitest view of the profession borrowed in the late nineteenth century from German universities, which focused almost totally on graduate education and research. But there is no rational ground to exclude from the profession college teachers whose main goal is explaining and defending the wisdom of the past to undergraduates. The job of traditioning its young is a necessary educational task of any society, certainly equal in importance and prior in developmental order to developing researchers and critical thinkers. Critical thinking by those who have no foundations and accepted verities and values leads to nihilism in philosophy and radicalism in politics. No society can long exist without shared values, stories, and traditions.
2. The Academic. As we saw above, Rabban argues that “academic” means whatever the profession says it means. And yet, a profession defined as the AAUP Declaration defines it will always view itself as the only authority that understands the true art and science of the profession. If what you say is not progressive and critical of conservative culture and if you don’t adhere to the dominant methods and conclusions of the “academic” disciplines, your work will not be judged as academic. We need a substantive definition of what counts as academic. I propose that teaching and research that occurs in a school, begins with clear axioms, intuitions, or facts and argues logically for its conclusions should count as academic. In this way, what counts as academic does not depend on inbred group thinking.
3. Peer Review. Peer review is central to the modern theory of academic freedom. If the nature of the profession and the concept of the academic are defined as Rabban defines them, then peer review is essential to proper adjudication of any academic freedom claim. However, if in the review process only members of the profession as it is defined by the AAUP Declaration and Rabban qualify as peers, then the outcome is predetermined: the academic nature of a professor’s work will be judged by the elite standards or prejudices or ideologies that constitute the ethos of the peer group. Professors are not saints or thinking machines! They are just as self-interested and tribal as any other group with common interests. In my view, review committees in academic freedom disputes should include members from outside the profession as a check on inbred group thinking and a surround-the-wagons mentality. No group unchecked by a balance of power and interest can be trusted to be fair to everyone concerned. Nimo iudex in causa sua (No one is judge in their own case!).
If the concepts of “the profession,” “the academic” and “peer review” must be broadened beyond the confines of research institutions and scholars engaged in discovery of new knowledge and mentoring the next generation of critical scholars, it follows that the concept of academic freedom must be broadened as well. An undergraduate college that emphasizes the great books or traditional or religious wisdom must embrace a view of academic freedom with a different scope and limits than an elite research university. Professors who desire to transmit, explain and defend traditional wisdom need the academic freedom to do that, and they need institutions that employ such teachers and rewards this kind of teaching. And why shouldn’t students have the academic freedom to study at such a college and to learn from such professors? It would be institutional suicide for a college that exists to provide this kind of education to grant professors academic freedom to criticize, reject, and replace traditional wisdom or religious faith with progressive or radical thought. Nor does it make sense for them to recruit and employ or retain professors with these aspirations. Academic freedom must be broadly conceived so as to be applicable to a wide variety of colleges and universities and a variety of professors. Academic freedom, then, is the freedom to carry out your academic vocation within the scope and limits of the educational philosophy and mission of the college where you teach, be that a research/critical university or a traditional, religious, or classical college. What counts as academic freedom depends on your location within the higher education spectrum. In education as in foot ware, one size does not fit all.
Next time: “Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom: The Cases of Dartmouth, AAUP Declaration, and Rabban, Academic Freedom”
In the previous essay we examined Julia Schleck’s defense* of the postmodern university. Though she admits that the postmodern university no longer believes in knowledge, truth, and virtue in the traditional senses of these terms, she nevertheless argues that society ought to grant professors academic freedom and tenure and generous financial support even though they engage in activities that seem destructive, useless or perverse to most people. My somewhat tongue in cheek paraphrase of her argument goes like this:
Trust us with your children and your money. Give us unfettered freedom, good pay, and lifetime employment. But don’t expect us to answer to you or explain why your investments are sound.
With Scheck’s argument in mind, I want to contrast the idea of a Christian college with her description of the postmodern university. As I observed in my former essay,
A university that no longer believes in knowledge, truth, or virtue no longer believes in itself. As far as I can tell, its driving purpose is maintenance of a system that provides faculty unfettered freedom, good pay, and lifetime employment in exchange for expressing their private opinions in esoteric vocabularies.
By rejecting all presupposed knowledge, truth, and virtue, the postmodern university loses its purpose, forfeits its prospects for progress, and gives up any measure by which we could judge its outcomes. To the casual observer, the postmodern university’s rejection of all “dogmas,” presuppositions, and time-honored truths, and its openness to strange and unpopular ideas may seem the epitome of enlightenment and a fine formula for uncovering new truth. But in this “the casual observer” is completely mistaken. For as described by Schleck, the postmodern university is not about discovering true and useful ideas. It’s about winning a struggle for power and money. The postmodern university replaces knowledge, truth, and virtue with ideology, power, and pretense.
A Christian college worthy of its name believes in knowledge, truth, and virtue; therefore, it believes in itself. Hence it can devote itself energetically to achieving its purpose. Its knowledge is faith, its truth is God and God’s creation, and its virtue is the way of Jesus Christ.
The founding principle of the Christian college is faith, the apostolic faith preached and preserved for us in the New Testament. Far from viciously restricting our search for understanding and truth, faith points us toward truth and away from idols and ideologies. It protects us from evil, immoral, and superstitious paths. The knowledge of faith serves as a foundation on which to build our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. Faith provides a language within which every discipline and every professor in the college can communicate with every other. Faith, sincerely held by every member of the college community, unifies the Christian college in a way the postmodern university can never achieve.
Because it believes in God the Creator of heaven and earth, the Christian college believes in an objective reality. For God is unchanging and eternal and is the Creator of all else. Truth is the conceptual form of reality and knowledge is the form of a mind in which dwells truth. In faith, the Christian college believes it possesses knowledge of God centrally and principally in Jesus Christ who is the living truth of God manifest in the world. And with respect to this knowledge, its purpose is twofold: (1) to pass this knowledge to the next generation unchanged and (2) to seek deeper understanding of the truth in all its dimensions. Every discipline and every professor is united in this purpose. All seek to know God and God’s works in truth.
A Christian college worthy of its name looks to Jesus Christ as the model for its conduct. There are not two systems of virtue, one for the church and one for the Christian college. Jesus Christ is the Lord of both. The way of Jesus is obedience to the Father; his is the way of humility, faith, love, hope, peace, and patience. The Christian college affirms the teaching of Jesus and his chosen apostles as the normative guide for our relationships to others and the use of our bodies. We are not allowed to do as we please with regard to money, power, sex, and honor. We must bring our words and deeds under the sanctifying and strengthening power of the Spirit. For the postmodern university “virtue” is a mere strategy for attaining power, a Darwinian struggle for money, control, and honor. It should not be so in a Christian college.
At first glance, the postmodern university seems to offer more freedom than does the Christian college. Professors have the freedom to reject Christian faith and traditional morality and to affirm atheism, immoralism, and perversity. They can blaspheme the holy, praise the profane, and parade the ugly without sanction. And they can teach their students to do the same. Christian colleges do not allow professors these freedoms, and true Christians do not want them. On the other hand, postmodern universities do not allow believing faculty to affirm Christian faith and interpret the world under the guidance of the Christian faith. And postmodern universities have their own dogmas, sacred cows, and lists of virtues and vices. They will not tolerate the blasphemies of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia; you may not speak against their sacraments: fornication, adultery, and abortion.
The Christian college holds a different view of freedom. There is no freedom in the power to do evil, only blindness and slavery to lust and pride. True freedom is God-given power to know the truth and do the good. Since Christian colleges believe in knowledge, truth, and virtue, they encourage believing faculty to teach and research under the guidance of their Christian faith. Students can learn from faculty who are so guided. Instructed by faith, Christian faculty can pursue the truth of God and creation with confidence, energy, and hope. And this is the freedom I cherish!
*Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism, University of Nebraska Press, 2022).
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