In Defense of Knowledge

BY HANK REICHMAN

Today the AAUP released a statement, In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, prepared by the association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in October and approved by the AAUP Council a month later.  An email signed by me was sent to all AAUP members announcing the release this morning.  The statement has already been endorsed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, PEN America, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.  I am hopeful that these groups will soon be joined by other higher education organizations and I encourage everyone to bring the statement to the attention of organizations to which you belong.

In nearly a decade chairing Committee A I have had the privilege of working on more than a few important statements and reports, but this one may be the most important.  The subcommittee that worked on the report did extraordinary work, but even more extraordinary was how well the committee as a whole developed and improved the initial draft.  As academics we’ve all experienced the difficulties associated with writing by committee, but I am happy to say that this process was exemplary.  Everyone at the committee’s fall meeting contributed to this document and in the end it was approved unanimously.  I thank the committee and the AAUP staff for their efforts.

This unanimity, I think, suggests something about the importance of the statement, which speaks directly to the current moment.   It warns that “at this moment of intense global instability, there is an ongoing movement to attack the disciplines and institutions that produce and transmit the knowledge that sustains American democracy.”  It calls into question “the assumption that all knowledge is just opinion and that each person has an equal right to her own opinion” that underlies so many attacks on education in general and the faculty in particular.  “When college students are encouraged to confuse education with, as one student recently put it, being ‘intimidated by the academic elite in the classroom’,” the statement declares, “we have a crisis.”

Expert knowledge, the statement proudly acknowledges, is never fixed “but subject to endless reexamination and reevaluation. . . .  The debate is open and fierce, but mere opinion has no place at the table.”  Academic freedom is essential to the advancement of knowledge, but it must, the statement explains, be distinguished from free speech.  The latter is a precious civic value, essential to the democratic formation of political will.  But the expert knowledge produced and transmitted by colleges and universities through research and teaching is “not about our political preferences; it is about the nature of the world.”

The statement decries the devaluation of knowledge as a public good produced by the growing undermining of public colleges and universities since the 1970s, not coincidentally the moment at which higher education’s doors were being opened to previously excluded populations.  “Indeed,” the statement suggests, “the unequal and unfair distribution of educational opportunity may well have played a significant role in making expertise appear more like a privilege of the wealthy and an expression of their interests than a disinterested contribution to the public good.”

The statement concludes with a call to return to “first principles”:

In 1915 the founders of the AAUP characterized the university as “an inviolable refuge” from the “tyranny of public opinion,” as “an intellectual experiment station, where new ideas may germinate,” but also as “the conservator of all genuine elements of value in the past thought and life of mankind which are not in the fashion of the moment.” On that basis they asserted “not the absolute freedom of utterance of the individual scholar, but the absolute freedom of thought, of inquiry, of discussion and of teaching, of the academic profession.” They pledged, as do we, to safeguard freedom of inquiry and of teaching against both covert and overt attacks and to guarantee the long-established practices and principles that define the production of knowledge.

It is up to those who value knowledge to take a stand in the face of those who would assault it, to convey to a broad public the dangers that await us—as individuals and as a society—should that pledge be abandoned.

I urge you to read the full statement and to share it with colleagues, friends, and family.

11 thoughts on “In Defense of Knowledge

  1. I think this is an excellent statement. But I do worry about one point of emphasis. Far too many people today (including at the AAUP) try to divide academic freedom from freedom of speech and imagine a “paradox” inherent in academic freedom. The statement argues, “Academic freedom seeks to insulate research and teaching from political pressure.” The insulation metaphor suggests a barrier between academia and politics, one that is too often interpreted to run both ways: Some traditionalists say that there is an unspoken agreement, that politicians will keep out of academia as long as academics keep politics out of their work. They then claim that academics have violated this “agreement” by their politicized teaching and research. We need to clearly reject that transactional view of academic freedom as a ban on politics. We must protect academia from political intrusion, but without ever seeking to limit anyone in academia from political expression. Liberty, not insulation, is the key principle of academic freedom. And part of the greatness of the AAUP is that it has evolved from its “first principles” to embrace a much broader conception of academic freedom than existed in 1915.

    • The statement declares (top of first column, page 4) that freedom of speech is “a precious right possessed by each individual, including members of colleges and universities.” As “members” the authors intended, as should be clear, to include faculty, students, and staff. All citizens enjoy freedom of speech. Academic freedom extends such freedom by claiming for professors immunity from institutional sanction for expression as citizens, both of the institution and the broader polity. This has been the position of the AAUP since 1915. Sadly, most employees outside academia cannot claim such protection from their employer’s discipline for their speech as citizens. Whatever quid pro quo re political expression “some traditionalists” (whoever they may be) might claim, this is most definitely not a claim made by this statement, nor is it one that any of its authors would endorse.

    • Politicians, yes.

      But other “influencers” and Big Brothers (and Big Sisters) can get in the way of true academic freedom: Religion, the Press and Media, the “P.C.” police, academic administrators, overwrought students, and even prevailing Public Opinion.

      It did not just happen in Galileo’s time. It happens today — and it happened to ME. And, after 4-5 years, NO ONE has come to my aid with anything resembling meaningful assistance — except to say “We agree that you suffered an injustice; why don’t you hire a $900/hour attorney.” (Yes, I’ve contacted AAUP and FLAME; they were “too busy” to take on my grievance.)

      https://www.academia.edu/23593134/A_Leftist_Critique_of_Political_Correctness_Gone_Amok_–_Revised_and_Updated

  2. This is a profound and timely statement by the AAUP. The attack on the creation and dissemination of knowledge by leaders in government and media pundits is, indeed, an attack on the capacity of society to meaningfully engage in democratic forms of governance and effective policy formation and implementation. It does a great disservice to students to undermine their respect for their teachers while elevating generally uninformed opinions to the status of knowledge. The decline in resources devoted by states and by the national government to research and higher education has lead to a privatization of knowledge. IN DEFENSE OF KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION should be as widely distributed and discussed as possible.

    • Many of the statements issued by politicians and media figures may have been “researched” by accredited academics or at least “experts” on the matters. That does not prevent them from putting “spin” on their analysis of the facts (which were put under scrutiny by the post-structuralist turn in academia).

      Likewise, many professors put spin (i.e., ideological bias) on their “facts” in the classroom, at conferences, on TV, and in Op-Ed columns. Need I provide specific examples?

  3. While I tend to agree with much of the vague principles enunciated in the above essay, I do take exception to two aspects of one sentence: “there is an ongoing movement to attack the disciplines and institutions that produce and transmit the knowledge that sustains American democracy.”

    1. I see little evidence of attacks on higher education EXCEPT FOR those that are entirely justified by the actions and policies of the “P.C. police” on so many campuses. The academic press and even mainstream media are filled almost daily with reports of denial of Free Speech rights and Academic Freedom for professors who are often accused, vilified, and punished for exercising intellectual and artistic liberty. My own case is but one example:

    https://www.academia.edu/23593134/A_Leftist_Critique_of_Political_Correctness_Gone_Amok_–_Revised_and_Updated

    2. It has become a shibboleth of academia that we should “produce and transmit the knowledge that sustains American democracy.” A meta-question that is rarely asked: WHY is AMERICAN democracy so important in this document? That is not a rhetorical question. I’d LOVE to read a serious and thoughtful answer. the sentence could just as well end on the word “knowledge,” right?

  4. Well done statement. Congratulations and thank you! I only wish more of my own colleagues in academia took these ideas to heart. For it’s not just those on the outside of the academic profession who have the wrong idea about knowledge; increasingly those inside the academic profession lack the integrity to see that the expert knowledge produced and transmitted by colleges and universities through research and teaching is “not about our political preferences; it is about the nature of the world.” Thus I hope we all take this statement to heart–not just outside academia but also inside academia, where we could begin some needed discussions about how we can better model and encourage that respect for expert knowledge.

    • Yes, it’s not just the Trumpists who allegedly want to limit Free Speech on campus. More often than not, it is pseudo-leftists who want to censor speech, art, and discussion when it is perceived — or MIS-perceived — to be “hate speech.”

      BTW, there is NO such legal entity as “hate speech.” The SCOTUS has ruled on this multiple times.

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