BY DAVID M. RABBAN
William Van Alstyne (right) at a 1972 meeting of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
William Van Alstyne, for decades a major leader in the AAUP and a preeminent scholar of constitutional law, died on January 29, 2019, at the age of eighty-four. He joined the AAUP in 1960, at the beginning of his career as a law professor, and twice served as president of the AAUP chapter at Duke University, where he taught for almost forty years. He became involved with the national AAUP in 1965, when he testified on its behalf against an attempt by legislators in North Carolina to enact a “speaker ban” that would have prevented Communists from speaking at state universities. Later that year, he was appointed to Committee S on Faculty Responsibility for the Academic Freedom of Students, the first of many national AAUP committees on which he served. The work of this committee led to the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students in 1967. He subsequently served as chair of Committee O on Organization (1969), general counsel (1969–70), chair of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure (1970–1973), and president of the AAUP (1974–1976). After his presidency, he served several additional terms on Committee A and another term as general counsel, and he was a long-standing member of the Litigation Committee. Pursuing his broad interests in civil liberties, he was also active in the American Civil Liberties Union, serving on its national board of directors.
Van Alstyne’s prolific and influential scholarship covered subjects across the broad field of constitutional law. Much of it addressed First Amendment issues. Among his many articles and essays, two classics relate especially to the work of the AAUP. “The Specific Theory of Academic Freedom and the General Issue of Civil Liberty” is a brilliant analysis of the relationship between academic freedom and free speech. “Tenure: A Summary, Explanation, and ‘Defense’” is a concise and sophisticated essay that corrects misconceptions about tenure while emphasizing its importance in protecting academic freedom. Similarly connecting his scholarship to his work with the AAUP, he organized and edited a collection of articles to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Entitled Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, the collection contains contributions from many scholars who had been active in the AAUP and includes his own piece, “Academic Freedom and the First Amendment in the Supreme Court of the United States: An Unhurried Historical Review.”
A scholar who influenced judges as well as academic colleagues, Van Alstyne was cited in Supreme Court opinions and numerous lower court decisions. In 2000, the Journal of Legal Studies named him among the forty most frequently cited legal scholars in the United States during the previous fifty years. Two polls of federal judges, practicing lawyers, and academics identified him as one of three professors among “the ten most qualified” persons for appointment to the Supreme Court. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him a member in 1994. Van Alstyne’s high professional standing made him a particularly effective advocate for the AAUP. His reputation far beyond the AAUP lent credibility to the positions he took on its behalf.
I had the good fortune to join the legal staff of the AAUP while Bill Van Alstyne was still president. His intellectual brilliance, verbal dexterity, and charismatic personality made it exciting to observe him in action and especially to work with him. His extemporaneous speaking was more polished than what most people can achieve through multiple revisions of written drafts. Telephone conversations with him left me intellectually stimulated for hours. Collaborating with him on legal briefs in cases that raised important and often novel issues for professors remains a highlight of my career. His legal analysis, strategic thinking, and insights about how to frame arguments differently in Supreme Court briefs than in other cases gave me a postgraduate legal education and the pleasure of working with an admired mentor to advance the principles that drew us to the AAUP.
Most of my work with Bill focused on issues of academic freedom and free speech, but I vividly remember his presentation at a daylong hearing in a large auditorium about proposed IRS regulations covering many, often extremely arcane, topics. One of these proposals would have imposed additional tax liability on professors. Bill felt strongly that the AAUP should testify against it. He rode his motorcycle from Duke to Washington, DC. He was dressed in leather, the only person among the several hundred in the auditorium who was not wearing blue or gray. Each speaker was limited to five minutes, and by the time Bill’s turn came in the middle of the afternoon, many in the audience were dozing off. Within thirty seconds, almost everybody was looking at Bill, riveted by the eloquence of his presentation. Even on a technical matter well outside his professional expertise, Bill could command attention. Happily for American professors, Bill’s eloquence was persuasive. The IRS decided not to implement the proposed tax.
With the death of William Van Alstyne, the AAUP has lost one of its most important leaders during the past fifty years. Those fortunate enough to have known him have lost an unforgettable friend.
Guest blogger David M. Rabban is the Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. He served as general counsel of the AAUP from 1998 to 2006 and chair of Committee A from 2006 to 2012.
Thank you, David, for this informative and moving tribute. Van Alstyne also made important contributions to the AAUP’s embrace of collective bargaining and unionization. Although as Committee A chair he — and all but one other member of the committee — opposed the move, after it was adopted he changed his view and in 1974 won election as AAUP president. Here’s how I described his tenure in a 2015 article in the Journal of Academic Freedom (https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Reichman_0.pdf):
“Although two pro-collective-bargaining candidates divided a majority of voters, Van Alstyne won with support from major collective-bargaining leaders, who hoped his election would unify the organization. Van Alstyne made good on this hope, successfully defeating efforts to limit funding for collective-bargaining organizing. In his 1976 presidential address Van Alstyne proclaimed the Association ‘more effective in more ways than at any time in its history.’ He identified two concerns for the AAUP: that the Association develop its own distinct approach to bargaining and that it not be reticent about involvement in such activity. On this latter point, he declared, ‘We have not been half-hearted, and we have in fact made it a resounding success.’ In sharp contrast to his previous opposition to collective bargaining, the former Committee A chair now boasted,
‘The presence of the Association in collective bargaining has also brought with it the flattery of widespread imitation: not only do our own agreements reflect the enforceable contractualizing of the 1940 Statement and related AAUP standards, but the other associations and unions have now reached the point where negotiation for recognition of AAUP standards is commonplace throughout collective bargaining in higher education.'”
As the current Committee A chair, I have always been humbled and inspired by the extraordinary accomplishments of those who preceded me in the position, like Van Alstyne and David Rabban. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of giants.
One other note: It’s amusing to see the photo of Van Alstyne at a Committee A meeting dressed in coat and tie. Our meetings today are decidedly (and thankfully) less formal, but I do sometimes wonder if we’ve lost something by conducting our work in more casual dress.