BY JOERG TIEDE

If teachers do not stand fighting in the front rank for freedom of intelligence, the cause of the latter is well-nigh hopeless, and we are in for that period of intimidation, oppression, and suppression that goes, and goes rightly, by the name of Fascism and Nazi-ism. — John Dewey, 1935

When Edward Ross was dismissed from Stanford University at Jane Stanford’s behest in 1900, philosopher Arthur O. Lovejoy, who later went on to found the AAUP, was among those who resigned in protest. The first investigation by the AAUP, that of the dismissal of four faculty members at the University of Utah in 1915, was prompted to a large extent by the public resignation of 17 faculty members in response to those dismissals. In 1919, Lovejoy, speaking as retiring president of the Association, commented on the fact that resignations in support of academic freedom were becoming rare. Lovejoy speculated that this was a result of the activities of the AAUP, but he did not consider it a salutary development. He reminded the membership that “when grave violations of [the principle of academic freedom] occur in any institution, it is essential that the members of the local faculty regard the defense of that principle, and of all the weighty interests of the university and of society which are involved in it, as primarily their own responsibility,” adding that the defense of academic freedom requires “more active co-operation from individual members of the Association than many members realize.”

In the middle of the Great Depression, when red-baiting attacks on American universities and the spread of totalitarianism in Europe fueled widespread concern over the state of academic freedom in the United States,  a 1937 AAUP report on the impact of the Depression on higher education observed that,

it is incumbent upon faculties in institutions of higher education to stand as a group for the principles they regard as essential for the welfare of higher education. In an age of mass pressures and organizations, with the existing agencies of mass communication already utilized by those interests and purposes inimical to higher education, a definite stand is required of those who would safeguard the academic tradition.

At that time, Lovejoy again returned to the role of the individual faculty member in the defense of academic freedom. In a review of Howard K. Beale’s Are American Teachers Free? Lovejoy indicated his agreement with Beale’s view that “more frequent and more numerous resignations of teachers in protest against grave violations of the civic or academic freedom of their colleagues would help materially,” but he noted that “[s]uch action of individuals in support of the integrity of their profession seems to be more uncommon now than a generation ago; the reason, doubtless, lies partly in changed economic conditions.” Large-scale resignations of faculty members in defense of academic freedom appear to have almost entirely disappeared after that point.

But other acts of solidarity—large and small, public and private—have occurred over time in defense of academic freedom. When Scott Nearing was dismissed from the University of Pennsylvania in 1915 because of his public advocacy against child labor, his faculty colleagues collected money amongst themselves to replace Nearing’s lost salary. After the Board of Regents of the University of California initiated the dismissal of Angela Davis because of her political affiliation in 1969, her department chair, Donald Kalish, approved her request to teach in the following quarter, causing the Regents to instruct the administration not to grant credit to students enrolled in her class. Kalish later informed the administration of the unanimous decision of the department to reappoint Davis after the courts prevented her dismissal on Constitutional grounds. The Regents subsequently relieved the administration of authority over her appointment and then refused to renew it, for which they were censured by the AAUP.