Tag Archives: Academic Freedom

New Resource for Lovers of Christian Colleges and Universities

I wanted you, my readers, to know that as of yesterday, my book The Christian University and the Academic Establishment is now in print and available. I hope, wish, dream that it will be read and discussed on Christian college and university campuses everywhere. I wrote it because I love the ideal of a Christian college. I believe it would be of interest to anyone who shares my love for Christian education—students, alumni, donors, faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees. Each chapter has questions for discussion at the end, and each theme (sometimes more than one chapter) has “takeaways” at its conclusion. And the last chapter (#12) contains a conclusion and four practical suggestions for Christian universities.

Take a look at the Amazon.com page for the book. Peruse the Table of Contents and the summary Amazon provides. Of course, if you know someone who could benefit from reading it, please recommend it.

In future posts I will quote some excerpts from the book and reflect on them.

Can Christian Scholars (And Colleges) be Academic?

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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.

Academic Hypocrisy

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 Academia

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.

Objections and Replies

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.”

Who is Responsible for Keeping Christian Colleges Christian? (Part One)

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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.

College Governance Before 1876

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).

The Emergence of a Professional Faculty, 1870-1920

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.

The Development of Faculty Governance 1920-1940

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.

Developing Consensus on Shared Governance, 1940-1975

The AAUP’s 1966 Statement

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.

Professional Association or Trade Union?

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.

Corporatization and the Challenges to Shared Governance, 1975-Present

Changing Social Conditions

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 the Challenges

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.

The Management Revolution

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.

Limits on Unionization

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.

Other Responses

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.

Shared Governance and the Future of Liberal Education

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?

Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom: The Cases of Dartmouth, AAUP Declaration, and Rabban, Academic Freedom

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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.

Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)*

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.

AAUP 1915 Declaration

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.

Rabban and the First Amendment right of academic freedom

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).

Can Christian Colleges Survive if “Academic Freedom” becomes a First Amendment Right?

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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.

Introduction

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

Summary of the Book’s Argument

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.

Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Chapter 1 Defining Academic Freedom in the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration

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.

Chapter 2 Initial Applications of the Constitution to the University

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.

Chapter 3 The Emergence of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

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).

Chapter 4 The Development of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

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).

Chapter 5 The Limited Application of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

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.

Chapter 6 A Theory of Academic Freedom as a Distinctive First Amendment Right of Professors

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.

Chapter 7 The Development of Institutional Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right of Universities

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 5^th vote for the majority but disagreed with the reasoning of both parties (14^th 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.

Chapter 8 A Theory of Academic Freedom as a Distinctive First Amendment Right of Universities

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.

Chapter 9 Can Institutional Academic Freedom Limit Free Speech?

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.

Chapter 10 Judicial Review of Conflicting Academic Freedom Claims Between Professors and Universities

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.

Chapter 11 Student Academic Freedom

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

Thoughts on the Theory of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

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.

Disputed Concepts

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!).

Academic Freedom Reconsidered

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”

Without God, Without Soul, Without Heart

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The Postmodern University

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.

The Christian College

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.

Faith Knowledge

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.

Transcendent Truth

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.

True Virtue

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.

Freedom Versus Freedom

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).

What is the Purpose of a University that No Longer Believes in Knowledge, Truth, or Virtue?

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Many of you know that I am very interested in the current state of higher education. Lately, I’ve been reading books about academic freedom. Most of my reading focuses on academic freedom in Christian colleges and universities. Today, however, I want to share my review of a book that sheds light on the present state of secular higher education:

Julia Schleck, Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism, University of Nebraska Press, 2022.

In this book, Julia Schleck attempts to defend the traditional practice of granting university faculty the special privileges of academic freedom and tenure, which employees in other lines of work do not enjoy. As her book title hints, she describes the challenges that the rise of the “neoliberal” model of the university poses to academic freedom. Her proposal for dealing with these challenges centers on the concept of “dirty knowledge.”

The Challenge

The term “neoliberalism” refers to a late 20^th century political philosophy that argues that “a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state” (See “Neoliberalism,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to Schleck, neoliberalism subordinates social/moral goods to economic goods and reduces group rights to individual rights. Applied to the university, neoliberalism measures the worth of knowledge production and student learning by their direct and immediate economic impact on society in producing qualified workers, new technology, and goods for the market. The public, politicians, governing boards, and administrators increasingly view the university as a business that should produce a near-term return on investments made by donors, students, granting agencies, and tax payers. University boards and administrators act as CEOs and managers of this knowledge business.

As a result of the university’s assimilation to neoliberalism, academic freedom is no longer understood as a privilege necessary for practicing the profession of professor. It is reconceived, rather, as a right of the individual citizen-professor almost totally assimilated to the constitutional right to free speech. In Schleck’s estimation, the focus on the individual professor weakens the idea of the professorate as a self-governing community of experts. Instead, professors become employees with employee and citizen rights. The turn to individual rights disperses the collective power the professorate traditionally used to protect the professorial vocation against violations of academic freedom. Not only so, in this new environment academic disciplines experience greater difficulty defending competent colleagues from censorship and disciplining incompetent or rogue professors.

Moreover, according to Schleck, one of the greatest threats to academic freedom in the neoliberal university is the division of professors into the tenured elite and the mass of contingent faculty. In theory, the contingent faculty (nearly 70% of all university teachers!) have “academic freedom” conceived along the lines of freedom of speech. But they have limited contracts that expire at designated dates. Hence not only are they underpaid and overworked; they are vulnerable to contract nonrenewal without recourse to the juridical procedures afforded to tenured professors. This practice allows boards and administrators to work around academic freedom rules in these cases. Increasingly, then, academic freedom is reserved for an elite few, not for all who engage in the profession. And sometimes, the elite tenured professors are the greatest threats to the academic freedom of the untenured and contingent faculty.

Two Proposed Solutions

What can be done to protect academic freedom today? Some urge a return to the original 1915 AAUP rationale for giving professors special privileges (academic freedom and tenure) not given to other employees, that is, society needs a professorate devoted to the public good. To devote themselves to the public good wholeheartedly, professors need to be free from the narrow interests of donors and board members and the fear of losing their livelihoods. Schleck warns, however, against getting too nostalgic about the good ole days. First, the idea of the “public good” will most likely be assimilated to neoliberal culture with its focus on productivity and economic value. Second, the “public good” as understood in 1915 was neither public nor good; it left out women, the poor, people of color, and other “invisible” groups.

A second proposal urges unionizing the faculty and engaging in hard-hitting collective bargaining. Schleck admits that unions can negotiate better pay, benefits and working conditions for professors. But unions still work within the neoliberal framework, treating professors as “labor” and the administration and board as “management.” The unionized professorate falls short of a self-governing profession that can justify its traditional privileges, that is academic freedom and tenure.

Schleck’s “Dirty Knowledge” Solution

Schleck proposes a model of academic freedom fitted to the university as it exists today. According to Schleck, the university of today is thoroughly postmodern. The university does not recognize any viewpoint as “true” or “good” or any one method of creating knowledge as superior to others. Hence academic freedom can no longer be defended with the rhetoric of the disinterested pursuit of truth or service to the highest good. These qualities no longer (if they ever did) describe the work of the professorate. The professors and disciplines of the postmodern university are overtly political, combative, and activist. They are warriors fighting for power to advance their causes.

Hence Schleck proposes that we reconceive academic freedom as “agonistic academic freedom,” that is, freedom to fight for your truth, your good and your knowledge, that is, for whatever helps your cause to achieve power. The university must not be expected to serve any one vision of “the public good.” It is only out of the refereed clash of ideas that society will be shaped and moved into the future. She states succinctly her vision of the postmodern university in her last paragraph:

“The knowledge produced and disseminated at universities has always been and will always be dirty, shot through with the politics and material inequities that characterize our society at large. Providing a special space for those contentions and an especially strong set of contenders is what the university offers to our democracy, and it is why it should continue to be funded by our communities. Like a wild profusion of plants, professors compete for the resources they need to generate the intellectual seeds specific to their form of life, seeds that universities will continue to store in the expectation that someday we as a society will need them to maintain and improve our quality of life, or even to perpetuate our species on earth. Universities should be sure to foster with a deliberate distribution of material resources the strangest, least useful, and most contrarian of these plants to ensure that we have the diversity we need to survive the coming storms. This new grounding for academic freedom gives us a better rationale for the renewal of the special employment protections under which previous generations of faculty have flourished. Such a renewal will enable us once again to reach for the heavens in our pursuit of knowledge, without forgetting that we are firmly rooted in the dirt” (pp. 116-117).

Critical Comments and Questions

Schleck’s book deserves thorough analysis and critique. But I will limit myself to a few observations.

(1) Her analysis of the challenges to academic freedom and the goals of higher education deserves thoughtful consideration: the commodification and monetization of the university’s contribution to society; the use of contingent employees for 70% of the faculty, and the assimilation of profession-based academic freedom to individual freedom of speech.

(2) I agree that unionization may be needed to secure better treatment for faculty and graduate student teaching assistants, and I agree that unionization falls short of the ideal of a self-governing profession. For it fails to ground its claim to the special privileges of academic freedom and tenure in publicly acknowledge values.

(3) Schleck is correct that there is no social consensus about the public good—at least not a very detailed consensus.

(4) But I am not clear how her proposal differentiates the university space from the public square where everyone is free to say whatever they wish. In her summary paragraph quoted above in full, she urges,

Providing a special space for those contentions and an especially strong set of contenders is what the university offers to our democracy, and it is why it should continue to be funded by our communities.

She attempts here to justify funding a “special place” for a “strong set of contenders” to engage in the clash of interests and ideas and the struggle for power. By what standards are the combatants (professors) deemed “strong,” that is competent? And who decides? Why can’t these functions be carried out in other places and by other people? Why pay and give people job security to do what every citizen is free to do?

Notice that she offers a public-good like rationale for granting a privileged space to the university. In the quote above, she hinted that the university offers something “to our democracy.” Apparently, then, promoting “democracy” is a foundational value she presupposes. And the traditional privileges granted to the professorate is valuable because it supports democracy. I am not sure how this works, because “democracy” itself is a contested concept in the postmodern university.

Using an ecological metaphor in which genetic diversity is of survival value, she outlines the postmodern university’s contributions in greater detail a bit later in these words:

Like a wild profusion of plants, professors compete for the resources they need to generate the intellectual seeds specific to their form of life, seeds that universities will continue to store in the expectation that someday we as a society will need them to maintain and improve our quality of life, or even to perpetuate our species on earth.

Society should support the contentious and seemingly useless discussions in the postmodern university because of their potential utility in the future. Again, Schleck appeals to a vague notion of public good. She urges society to tolerate what may seem to most people useless, ideological, destructive, godless, profane, extreme, angry, and racist discussions in view of the possibility that some of the ideas thus formulated will contribute to our future “quality of life.” One might ask about the scale on which a “quality of life” is measured.

Scheck seems particularly worried that the neoliberal university may not see the social value of such disciplines as her own. She is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, specializing in Woman’s and Gender Studies. She says,

Universities should be sure to foster with a deliberate distribution of material resources the strangest, least useful, and most contrarian of these plants to ensure that we have the diversity we need to survive the coming storms. This new grounding for academic freedom gives us a better rationale for the renewal of the special employment protections under which previous generations of faculty have flourished.

Perhaps Scheck stretches the ecological metaphor beyond its applicability. For it makes sense to assume that nature never produces the useless, redundant and wrong, but human beings often produce nonsense and evil. She here urges toleration and even fostering of strange, useless, and contrarian studies in the postmodern university. I don’t think she thinks these studies are truly strange, useless, and contrary to all that is good and true. She speaks, rather, of the public’s untrained perceptions. But we must ask her this question: might not some ideas, theories, and fields of study generated by the postmodern university be truly strange, useless and contrary to all that is good and true? Should the university tolerate anything and everything? If she answers “Yes,” I return to my previous question about what distinguishes the university from the public square. If she answers “No,” I’d like to know how we judge between the tolerable and the intolerable.

Must the public blindly trust the community of scholars in a specialized area to judge between bad and good academic projects? Can we rule out the possibility that whole disciplines, subdisciplines and communities of scholars may be engaged in that which is truly “strange, useless, and contrary to all that is good and true”? Might not some disciplines simply be manifestations of mass kookiness? I don’t see in Schleck any rules for what counts as sound academic teaching, learning, and research and what does not. She seems to be saying to the public something 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.”

What, then, is the purpose of a university that no longer believes in knowledge, truth, or virtue? Julia Schleck tries valiantly to answer this question. She fails. And I am not convinced that anyone else could do a better job. Because, 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.

Academic Freedom and Christian Education (Part Three)

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This essay concludes my series on academic freedom in American universities and colleges. I posted earlier instalments on July 15, 2023 and August 28 2023. As we discovered in the first two essays, academic freedom is a contested concept. Simple appeals to academic freedom soon find themselves mired in disputes about the nature and limits of such freedom. Even in public and private secular colleges the idea is a bone of contention. And this dispute expands inevitably to disagreements about the nature of the teaching profession, the academic ideal, and the place of the university in society. Your stance on these subjects determines how you understand academic freedom. Not surprisingly, then, the nature of academic freedom is also disputed within self-designated Christian colleges and between Christian colleges and secular colleges.

Diversity Among “Christian” Colleges

Great diversity reigns among “Christian” colleges. We must map this diversity before we examine the distinction between academic freedom in Christian colleges and academic freedom in secular colleges. I spoke above of “self-designated” Christian colleges. I did so because there is as much diversity among Christian colleges as there is among “Christian” churches and individual Christians. Some church related colleges have so assimilated to the national culture that only vestiges of Christianity remain. Perhaps they require a course or two in religion, maintain a chapel on campus, and employ a chaplain, but otherwise they differ little from their secular counterparts. Their religious studies departments are very progressive, and there are no confessional requirements for students or faculty. The scope of academic freedom in these colleges tracks perfectly with secular schools.

At the other end of the spectrum are colleges that require administrators, board members, faculty and students to adhere to a list of orthodox beliefs. Christian symbols permeate the campus, occasions for worship are numerous and attendance is mandatory, and faith-affirming classes in Bible and theology are required. Expressions of faith and prayer in the classroom are encouraged. Strict moral conduct by students and faculty is expected. Continued employment is contingent on abiding by these rules in life, teaching, and research. Confessional boundaries determine the limits of academic freedom.

Between these two extremes lies a spectrum of self-designated “Christian” colleges. In his book Quality With Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions (Eerdmans, 2001), Robert Benne lists four types of “Christian” colleges: Orthodox, Critical-Mass, Intentionally Pluralist, and Accidentally Pluralist (p. 49).

The question whether or not a particular college that self-designates as Christian really is Christian is open for debate in the same way a church’s or an individual’s claim to be Christian is open for debate. I am willing to admit that various models of the Christian college are possible, just as I am willing to accept some flexibility of belief among churches and individual believers. But there are limits. Outright denial or malicious neglect of core Christian doctrine or abandonment of Christian morality belie claims to Christian character. A college that designates itself as Christian should maintain a constant internal debate about the meaning of that designation.

When a person claims to be a Christian it is reasonable to assume that they sincerely hold the central beliefs proclaimed in the New Testament and wish to be an active and faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. Likewise, when an institution advertises itself as “Christian” it should embody this very same confession in its institutional mission, policies, and code of conduct. The Christian faith encompasses every dimension of life. It is a way of thinking, feeling, and living. Compatibility with the Christian mission of a Christian college should be a determining factor—equal to technical competence—in administrative, faculty, and staff hiring, and in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions. It is relevant to curriculum, co-curriculum, teaching, and research.

Christian Colleges Contrasted with Secular Colleges

If a self-designated Christian college adheres to the above essential marks of a Christian college, its concept of the nature and limits of academic freedom should differ markedly from that employed in state or private secular, or nominally Christian colleges. To grasp those differences let’s examine ways Christian and secular colleges differ.

The Reason to Exist

As a matter of historical record, at least from 1900 onward, Christian colleges (Protestant) were founded as alternatives to secular colleges and universities. The older private colleges and newly established state schools had come first to tolerate and then promote agnosticism, secular humanism, atheism, social Darwinism, pantheism, and religious indifferentism. The founders of Christian colleges rejected as laughable the claim that these secular colleges were “nonsectarian” or neutral on matters of religion. Christian colleges aimed to protect young minds from being led astray by persuasive presentations of these anti-Christian ideologies. This sentiment is expressed clearly by William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) in a speech at Taylor University in Upland, IN:

Parents all over this nation are asking me where they can send their sons and daughters to school knowing that their faith in God and in morality will not be destroyed. I find that this is a college where they teach you the Bible instead of apologizing for it, and I shall for this reason recommend Taylor University to inquiring Christian parents [Quoted in William Ringenberg, The Christian College: A History of Protestant Higher Education in America (Baker,1984, 2006) p. 171]

The Christian worldview served as the intellectual and moral framework to give coherence to institutional policies, curriculum, and co-curriculum.

Christian colleges were not founded as research universities or as instruments to serve the national interest in agriculture, industry, and defense. It was not their purpose to change or preserve the national culture. Their aim was much less grandiose, being a direct extension of the aspirations of churches and Christian parents. It was to educate young people for living as Christians in their chosen professions, as ministers, missionaries, teachers, and others. Christian colleges transforming themselves into research universities and touting their service to the nation is a recent development. This transformation seems always to be accompanied by a loss of Christian identity.

The Profession

As we learned in previous articles in this series, the founding of the American Association of University Professors (1915) was part of an effort by leading professors at America’s elite research universities to consolidate the growing demand for greater professionalization of the professorate. Among their goals were creating nation-wide standards and a nation-wide culture for the profession. Not surprisingly, their professional standards and culture were those most congenial to the secular research university and the self-interests of the professors who teach there. They wished to nationalize and standardize the image of professors as secular saints devoted to discovering truth—courageous, unbiased, and free from all external loyalties that would constrain their judgment.

Teachers that embrace fully the founding purpose and mission of the Christian college do not fit the image of the professor whose highest loyalty is to the profession as secular universities understand it. Ideally, Christian college professors would possess technical mastery of their subject area equal to that of professors in secular universities. Yet they would remain critical of ways in which secular professors in these fields import alien frameworks and anti-Christian philosophical, moral, and political beliefs into their research and teaching. For example, a Christian professor would deny that to be a good physicist, chemist, or biologist one must assert that these sciences refute belief in God and creation. Christian professors see clearly that the social and psychological sciences—insofar as they are truly scientific— have nothing to say about morality. However, because holding such secular views seems to be a requirement of the profession, Christian professors may feel like strangers within the profession.

The Academic Ideal

As we learned in previous articles, even secular colleges debate the nature and purpose of academia: Should academia be driven by the cool, objective search for truth regardless of its practical application? Or, should its goal be to reform society in a mood of urgency and advocacy? Advocates of the truth-seeking approach accuse the cause-advocating group of abandoning reason for political advocacy. In response to this charge, the cause-advocating group accuses the truth-seeking group of hypocrisy. Their high-flown rhetoric of disinterested science hides their intellectual assumptions and socioeconomic agendas. Perhaps these two alternatives are not mutually exclusive. Even so, thoughtful Christian academics will not combine them in the same way that secular academics do. Christian professors value reason and truth-seeking highly and they prize fairness in critical evaluation. In this, they resemble the truth-seeking ideal. But they do not pretend to take a neutral attitude toward the Christian understanding of God, the world, humanity, and morality. This stance of advocacy they have in common with the cause-advocating academics.

The real difference, then, between Christian academics and truth-seeking secular academics is not that the latter value reason and truth and the former do not. They differ, rather, in the guiding assumptions and presuppositions each makes. Likewise, Christian academics and cause-advocating academics do not differ in that one serves non-academic causes and the other refrains from serving any cause outside of academia. They differ in the causes they serve.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is about the freedom to teach and learn within the limits clearly defined by an academic institution. This description applies both to secular and Christian colleges. The limits on academic freedom differ according to the ways each type understands the mission of the college, the character of the profession, and the nature of academia. Secular colleges grant professors freedom to teach and advocate agnostic, atheist, immoralist/libertine, and other views incompatible with Christian faith but deny them freedom to teach and advocate Christianity. In contrast, Christian colleges deny (or should deny) professors freedom to teach atheist, agnostic, immoralist/libertine, or any other view it regards as anti-Christian.

Understandably, professors want maximum freedom and secure employment. But there is no college that allows unlimited academic freedom and unconditional tenure. If professors want freedom to teach unbelief and immorality and recruit young people for those causes, they should seek employment where they have freedom to do this. Similarly, if professors want freedom to argue that Christianity is true, good, and beautiful, they may be happier in a Christian college, which allows and encourages such advocacy.

If private and public secular colleges wish to teach anti-Christian views, this is a decision for those institutions and their stakeholders to make. And if Christian colleges and their stakeholders decide that anti-Christian views and values must not be taught and practiced, this is their prerogative. There is no rationally self-evident or divinely revealed law of academic freedom, and there is no academic supreme court to settle disputes among different views. Institutions must discover through dialogue and debate among the interested parties a balance that works best for them.

The Many Faces of Academic Freedom*

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As readers of this blog know, I have had a long-term interest in higher education, especially in the nature of the Christian college. Today I want to focus on the theme of academic freedom. I just finished reading Daniel Gordon, What is Academic Freedom? A Century of Debate–1915 to the Present (Routledge, 2023.).** Gordon is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It’s not possible in one short essay to do justice to this excellent study. My goal is to present a very compressed summary of the book and draw your attention to some things I learned from reading it.

It pains me not to recount all the stories, authors, and related issues in this book—the case of Angela Davis ([1969/70] Can the Regents of the University of California fire you for being a communist?), Steven Salaita (Can your offer of employment be rescinded because of your anti-Israeli statements?). What about the work of Stanley Fish on academic freedom or the thought of Alexander Meiklejohn on the absolute nature of freedom of speech or Edward Said on academic freedom and the politicization of the study of literature? And so much else!

Lessons Learned

The current controversies about the presence of Marxism, Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and other forms of “radical indoctrination” in American colleges and universities were initiated in 2003 by David Horowitz. Horowitz began a campaign to get state legislatures to ban (mainly) Marxist indoctrination from university classrooms by adopting the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) into state law. Horowitz received support from dozens of state legislators and huge pushback from university faculty members. The debate continues today and promises to intensify as the 2024 campaign season progresses. Should academic freedom extend to a professor’s political activism and advocacy in the classroom? Horowitz’s campaign focuses on the academic freedom of students not to be coerced or intimidated into accepting a professor’s political viewpoint. On the other side, defenders of “radical” professors and the politicized classroom claim the academic freedom to teach their views even if unpopular. Both sides appeal to academic freedom.

The genius of Gordon’s book is its historical explanation of how the concept of academic freedom came to be understood in such dramatically different ways. I will focus on Gordon’s documentation of three historical changes that profoundly affect contemporary discussions of academic freedom.

The American Association of University Professors

In 1915, Arthur Lovejoy and others founded the American Association of University Professors. In view of the continuing push toward the professionalization of the American professorate and the desire to forestall governmental interference and censorship of teaching and publication, Lovejoy wrote the 1915 AAUP General Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. The Declaration claims the right of professors to explore issues within their disciplinary expertise with great latitude in view of their noble calling. However, it warns against using the classroom to “indoctrinate” (Lovejoy’s word) young students with the opinions of the professor, especially with partisan political views on issues of current social concern. Additionally, the original 1915 Declaration urges professors to be cautious in their speech in non-academic settings: “In their extramural utterances, it is obvious that academic teachers are under a peculiar obligation to avoid hasty or unverified or exaggerated statements, and to refrain from intemperate or sensational modes of expression.”

However, by 2006 the AAUP had changed its opposition to politicizing the classroom under the presidency (2006-2012) of Cary Nelson. Nelson was the chief opponent of the Horowitz project. Long before the AAUP got on board, the American University had already shifted its understanding of academic freedom. The shift began in the 1960s with the founding of programs in Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and other analogous groups. These programs were from the very beginning unapologetic advocacy groups. By the 1990s postmodernism (Michel Foucault) had convinced many academics that all speech is political. According to postmodernism, those who claim scientific neutrality or objectivity merely hide the power structures that favor their class. Today, two visions of academic freedom compete for dominance, the postmodern activist and the anti-political professional view.

Freedom of Speech

The second historical transformation I had not fully understood before I read Gordon’s book is the change in the jurisprudence of free speech. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses the right of speech: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….” Originally, this restriction applied to the federal government only. States were free to enact their own bills of rights and laws concerning, among other things, speech. After the Civil War, the United States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1868). It begins, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…. The bolded lines are taken today as applying to the states all the rights of the citizen listed in the Amendments to the Federal Constitution. What I did not know was that it took the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, until well into the twentieth century to apply “freedom of speech” to the states.

Additionally, I did not understand the federal Judiciary’s evolving theory of what constitutes a legitimate limit on speech. Until the early twentieth century, the courts agreed that speech that tended to create unrest or might reasonably be thought to do so was not protected by the First Amendment. In the 1919 case Schenck v. United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, articulated the “clear and present danger” test for when the government may limit the exercise of speech. However in the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case, the Supreme Court replaced the “clear and present danger” test with the “imminent lawless action” test. As is clear, the conditions under which speech may be limited by a government entity became more and more restrictive as the century unfolded. Correspondingly, the scope of free speech was expanded exponentially.

The Fusion of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

Before the 1960s, academic freedom was distinguished from the constitutional right to freedom of speech. Academic freedom was considered a special freedom to teach based on the unique calling and qualifications of the professor, the nature of academia, and the special role of the university in society. One can see this distinction clearly in the 1915 AAUP General Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. In public spaces, controversies over speech rights were focused on the political and commercial spheres, and in the 1915 statement those activities were excluded from the classroom as inappropriate to the profession. Moreover, as we saw in the previous section on the history of free speech, until the 1960s government at all levels could restrict speech for a number of reasons. Hence before that time, appealing to the right of free speech in an academic setting would not have helped one’s case. Moreover, appealing to the First Amendment to protect academic speech would in effect surrender the special status of teaching as a profession and place it on the same level as a political rant or an advertisement for soap.

But within the last 50 years, the courts, the professorate, and the public have come to identify academic freedom with freedom of speech. And since the courts now protect even the most outrageous and radical forms of speech, activist professors that wish to use such speech in the classroom increasingly appeal to the First Amendment to protect their right to say whatever they wish in the classroom–political rants, recruitment drives, and vitriolic, personal attacks on religious and political leaders.

Academic Freedom in Christian Colleges

Though Gordon’s book deals with state educational institutions only, I believe it can be helpful in grappling with the issue of academic freedom in Christian colleges. I want to expand on this at a later date, but let me tell you briefly what I mean. (1) Gordon explodes the idea that there is only one definition of academic freedom that must be implemented in every institution that claims to be true to the nature of the academic vocation. Christian colleges, then, should be free to define academic freedom in a way that fits their mission. (2) Debunking the idea that academic freedom must be subsumed under the more general concept of freedom of speech will help Christian colleges resist encroachments by the state, accrediting bodies, and professors that work against the Christian mission of the college.

*See also my essay of January 24, 2022, “Academic Freedom in Context.”

**As of this writing, the Kindle version of this book is free! And instantly available!

Freedom of Speech for Me but Not for Thee

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There is great ferment in contemporary American society over the idea and practice of freedom of speech. The history of the United States of America from 1788 to today could almost be derived from the history of interpretation and application of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Perhaps reading that history would reveal that from its institution until today, the right to freedom of speech has been prized most by groups with the least political and cultural power. The dominant culture has been less enthusiastic, because freedom of speech grants unearned power to those who do not have it and exposes those with power to criticism and threat of losing power. However, history demonstrates that once the formerly powerless groups gain power and themselves become the dominant political and cultural force, they become critics of freedom of speech. I know it sounds cynical, but I think most appeals to lofty ideals in defense of free speech turn out to be little more than clever rhetorical ploys.

As an example, consider the change that has occurred on American college campuses since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that exploded onto public consciousness in 1964-65. At that time, left-leaning students demanded freedom of political speech on campus. The enemy was the old conservative establishment on campus and in the country as a whole. On college campuses today—and in many other centers of power–the political/cultural left is overwhelmingly dominant. Not surprisingly, the new leftist orthodoxy is as great a suppressor of dissent as the conservative establishment ever was, perhaps even greater. Speech defending conservative morality and politics and even speech advocating free speech is condemned as “hate speech” or “racism” or some other form of despicable speech. The list of ways to misspeak grows longer every day. It seems that hardly anyone really believes in free speech. They pretend to support it only when it is to their advantage.

I do not deny that there have been some true believers in free speech. Sincere free speech advocates past and present appeal to the value of truth. The appeal assumes that everyone can (or should) subordinate their private interests, beliefs, preconceived notions, and desires for wealth, power, and honor to the communal quest for truth and goodness. Allowing everyone to participate in public deliberations, whether we agree or disagree with them, serves the goal of getting a clearer picture of the actual state of affairs and of what is possible. And that makes us all better off in the long run. Or, so the argument goes.

These days, defenses of free speech come only from conservative circles with perhaps a few leftover liberals mixed in. Political leftists and postmodernists do not believe in truth, and they label all appeals to truth and fact as ideological defenses of the racist, sexist, homophobic, white, colonialist establishment. What matters to the political/cultural left is consolidation of its power. Free speech for conservatives would only hinder that consolidation.

Next Time: Consider the essay above an introduction. In future essays we will examine the idea of free speech in detail. What does it mean? Where does it apply? How do churches, Christian schools, and other religious non-profit institutions deal with demands for more freedom of speech within their spheres or for more restrictions on speech?

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