BY HANK REICHMAN
This past weekend the San Francisco Chronicle carried an article reporting that a white emeritus professor of economics at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) — where I taught for twenty-five years before fully retiring in 2015 — “is teaching racist theories on intelligence. Students and faculty want him out.” A petition is circulating that demands the professor’s dismissal — he continues to teach part-time — and has gained many signatures. Several students and faculty members recently addressed the CSU Board of Trustees also calling for his removal.
It is not clear from the information available to me whether the professor is actually teaching these theories, however. The SF Chronicle article reported that his published writings claim “that certain Black and Hispanic ethnic groups are inherently less intelligent on average than white Europeans and Northeast Asians.” He apparently comes to these questionable conclusions on the basis of comparison of scores on IQ tests, and has published his “findings” in what he claims are respected peer-reviewed journals “within the mainstream of contemporary intelligence research.” According to the SF Chronicle report, he “has written that ‘the average level of intelligence in sub-Saharan Africa is quite low,’ that African American women are overpaid ‘relative to their cognitive ability,’ that brain size varies along racial lines and IQ is linked to brain size, and that ‘people should face issues of eugenics and dysgenics more forthrightly than has recently been the case.’”
I am not a geneticist nor a psychologist — but, of course, neither is this economist — but as an informed person I am aware that definitions of “intelligence” vary greatly. Indeed, it is questionable whether or not there is any single thing that can be given that name. Moreover, as one CSUEB faculty member trained in psychology pointed out, this economist “treats IQ tests as reliable measures of intelligence, when the psychology field has known for decades that the tests are ‘inherently culturally biased.’” A British science writer, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, told the SF Chronicle that the professor is one of a group of “race realists” who, she said, “set up their own journals, and then they cite each other. So they give the veneer of respectability.” But the research, she said, is “nonsense on so many levels.” As Ibram X. Kendi concluded in a 2016 essay in Academe, “These tests have failed time and again to achieve their intended purposes: measuring intelligence and predicting future academic and professional success. The tests, not the black test-takers, have been underachieving.”
This morning CSUEB President Leroy Morishita, whose term ends soon (a successor was announced last week), sent an email statement to all university employees acknowledging “the pain and disgust that people have reasonably expressed in response to the writings of our faculty member.” Nonetheless, Morishita declared that “as a public institution of higher education, we are bound by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees free thought and speech. The university must uphold these First Amendment guarantees whether or not it agrees with the views of a faculty member or finds them reprehensible, as long as the expression is lawful, does not violate our antidiscrimination policies reflected in CSU Executive Orders 1096 and 1097, and comports with campus time, place and manner policies.”
The First Amendment claim offered by Morishita is, to be sure, true insofar as the professor was speaking extramurally, that is, as a private citizen. As a public employee he does enjoy broad constitutional rights to free expression outside of his work responsibilities, especially given that California is part of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Garcetti decision, which limits public employee speech, does not apply to college and university professors. Moreover, even in private institutions such expression should be protected under the principles of academic freedom as distinct from First Amendment protection, which I am disappointed that Morishita — who I know to be well aware of and sympathetic to those principles — did not invoke. It would and should be difficult, if not well nigh impossible, for the CSUEB administration legally to dismiss the professor solely on the basis of his extramural comments, however despicable.
But the real problem is whether this economist’s views were expressed by him extramurally as a citizen and not as a professor engaged in research and teaching, which is not immediately apparent. For while the First Amendment makes no distinction between speech that is accurate and speech that is not (otherwise, President Trump would have long ago lost his right to speak), academic freedom does. Academic freedom grants considerable scope to the consciences of individual scholars, but it does not protect an individual right of professors to do whatever they wish in their research and teaching or, for that matter, to say whatever they want in public remarks. Nowhere in higher education is freedom of inquiry and research totally unrestrained. Although space must be provided for iconoclastic or unpopular approaches, researchers must conform to accepted intellectual and disciplinary standards. Legitimate restraints on research can be established and policed, but only by the community of trained researchers itself, largely through mechanisms of peer review.
So, are the noxious sentiments expressed by this professor to be taken as comments made by him as a citizen or are they products of his research? He is an economist and, it would seem, these ideas are not much, if at all, relevant to his disciplinary expertise, any more than my opinions on, say, climate change are relevant to my expertise in Russian and European history. On the other hand, however, he claims this work to be scholarly research and he would not be the first scholar to drift over the years into fields and disciplines not directly connected to their area of initial research. I would suggest that if a faculty member has claimed work to be a research product — perhaps in a promotion or post-tenure review — then it should be judged by the standards of research. If that is so, it would be no ipso facto violation of academic freedom for the CSUEB to convene an appropriately constituted faculty committee to consider the professor’s employment status on the basis of charges of research misconduct. The case would be — and should be — difficult to prove, but it would not be entirely illegitimate on its face. (In this case, however, given the professor’s emeritus status and soon-to-end part-time teaching assignment such an effort would probably not be worthwhile.)
Even more problematic, of course, would be if this professor is actually teaching these ideas in his classes. Under the principles of academic freedom instructors can assert viewpoints that remain controversial. But they cannot present as truth propositions that are in fact professionally contestable without allowing students to challenge their validity or advance alternative understandings (see the AAUP’s 2007 report, Freedom in the Classroom). The SF Chronicle article’s headline suggested that the professor is actually teaching these ideas, but it provides no evidence to suggest that he is and President Morishita’s statement makes no such suggestion. But if he is teaching these things then it would be no violation of academic freedom to consider whether such teaching is relevant to his assigned courses in economics or whether he is presenting these ideas as truth, when they are at minimum highly contested and rarely, if ever, accepted in the relevant disciplines.
Dismissing or even disciplining a tenured faculty member for cause should be difficult. The faculty member must be protected by the principles of academic freedom and rigorous academic due process as outlined in the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. But it need not be impossible, the First Amendment notwithstanding.
I don’t fully understand what the point of view is here. Part of my problem is this phrase: “professionally contestable.” I’m not a geneticist either, although I do know that if your parents didn’t have children, the odds are that you won’t have any either. 🙂
All jokes aside, definitions of intelligence ARE fluid and “professionally contestable.” And if this prof allows students to challenge his data or methodology, as has been the case with the Bell Curve research, then I see no reason why he can’t make his claims and have them disputed by students, other scholars, and even the general public. In my opinion, based on what I know, his claims are not settled science — and neither is the opposite, especially since the degree to which IQ tests measure innate (or experiential) intelligence is debatable, and probably determined in part by socioeconomic conditions. Nonetheless, the pseudo-“P.C.” dogma should not be the determining factor in this prof’s employment. After all, he’s not claiming the Earth is flat or that the Sun revolves around Planet Earth. (You may disagree.)
As Justice Brandeis famously said, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.” Why can’t we use that as a yardstick?
It is hard to discern what your actual position is: you seem to be taking a mixed position that gives a partial defense to the Academy and the tenure culture, while otherwise dismissing the complaints as ultimately unfruitful given his emeritus status (and surely a swifter fate would await an adjunct, assistant or associate), but then assuaging the Left somewhat so as not to otherwise too terribly offend their tribal sensibility. I would come down harder: the man has every right natural and positive, to express and communicate his position, or share it in a classroom. As for truth, there is nothing sacrosanct in any classroom, from any professor, in any discipline. In a true university, as Saul Bellow insightfully said in the Forward to “Closing of the American Mind” by Bloom, all ideas are at risk, and all members of the community must themselves at risk. It is interesting to note otherwise that Northwestern University engineering professor Arthur Butz, who wrote the provocative “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century” is enjoying a certain academic immunity and free speech protection, even as an associate, and over an arguably more contentious (and institutionally defended) issue. As for free speech versus and academic freedom, I like David Moshman’s pragmatic position: “Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic work.” This makes most public expressions by the law academy over politics for example, to be questionable and at least invoking Linde.
Yes, there seem to be two issues here — the fact that such work has long been discredited and so does not have the protection of academic freedom (which protects work deemed to have research integrity even if controversial) and the fact that teaching such ideas would constitute discrimination and harm in the classroom. So if he brings that garbage into his writings or into his conversation with students, the First Amendment protections are irrelevant in both cases. He can talk about it all he wants with his relatives at Thanksgiving and if they decide to sue him, the First Amendment might protect him there but that’s about it.
Of course, using words like “long been discredited” and “teaching such ideas would constitute discrimination” are ALWAYS used when someone is trying to “discredit” someone else’s ideas. It is especially prevalent in the “cancel culture” of today’s academia to censor ideas that should be disputed with data and countervailing arguments, not with “P.C.” shibboleths.
I still have not heard anyone yet with any kind of challenge to Justice Brandeis’s edict on Free Speech: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.” Any takers?
Quite so; however, this particular issue is centered in identity. If it were over, say, exoplanets, or magneto-plasma power, all sides would be welcome, and would only result in more knowledge. But identity, or identitarianism, has been framed by political policy, and even law, to be the potential object of harm. That is, in the context of race, sex, ethnicity and other markers, words themselves can be asserted as creating hostility or isolation, thereby discrimination, and therefore triggering Title VI. There is no “Title VI” claim if I say quantum spin theory, or Hegelian anti-realism, are advancing false characteristics. In personal identity theory, sticks and stones can “break bones” (or egos). Brandeis is especially interesting in that BLM language is centered in harm: rioting, property destruction, racial retribution and constitutional violation. The clear and present danger threshold?
“He can talk about it all he wants with his relatives at Thanksgiving and if they decide to sue him, the First Amendment might protect him there but that’s about it.”
The First Amendment protects speech from government control — not family control. I’m not sure what the grounds of such a hypothetical suit might be, but he could not claim First Amendment protection of his right to free speech, any more than we would accept our children claiming free speech rights at the dinner table when they taunt a sibling and we ask for decorum!
While I find the ideas being discussed to be reprehensible, I am also not sure that being “long since discredited” is sufficient for withholding the protections of academic freedom, especially since there are numerous cases of long-since-discredited ideas achieving a measure of respectability later. The point of academic freedom is that judgments such as “discredited” are often exercises in power, and we need to be cautious about allowing power to determine what is acceptable in academic work, even when (or perhaps especially when) we agree.
Moreover — with apologies for the rambling — I am also skeptical of the proposition that these ideas, however reprehensible, would necessarily entail “discrimination and harm in the classroom”. We conventionally grant considerable leeway in the expression of ideas, so long as we do not act on those ideas in discriminatory ways. If the faculty member in question grades down Hispanic or Black students on the grounds that they must be less intelligent, with no actual evidence, he would be guilty of discrimination. Simply expressing his belief in less intelligence is not in and of itself discriminatory.
Finally, I know that I am in the minority in regarding tenure as the real guarantee of academic freedom, but I think I can safely say that an emeritus instructor has no right to teach a course apart from a contract, and that contract does not have to be renewed, for pretty much any reason, without skating too close to any violation of his academic freedom.
Thank you, Barbara, for these thoughtful comments. I want to address your final two points. It was not my contention that this professor’s comments, be they extramural or in his research, would necessarily entail discrimination and harm in the classroom. Although as deeply problematic as the notion of someone who believes that Blacks and Hispanics as a group are less intelligent teaching at an institution like CSUEB that is “majority minority” is, there should still need to be concrete evidence of such discrimination — or a clearly expressed propensity to discriminate, as evidenced, for instance, by comments about his own students — before dismissal or even discipline would be warranted. My argument instead was that if he taught these ideas in economics classes, then the content of his teaching, not its purported effects on students, would be in question. Persistently introducing topics and ideas not relevant to the class material and/or not accepted by the appropriate discipline is behavior that, under AAUP principles, should not be protected by academic freedom.
Second, I agree with you about tenure; indeed, I have an article in the next issue of Academe making that argument and urging that faculty, tenure-track and contingent, join together to reverse the erosion of the tenure system. However, I believe this professor is participating in the CSU’s Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP), under which a retired faculty member is entitled to teach up to half-time at prorated full salary for up to five years. I participated in that program from 2010 to 2015. Such faculty members retain their tenured status. They can teach again after that period, but only on contingent contracts, pretty much always at a much-reduced salary and with no guarantees of future employment. Since this person retired in 2016, my assumption is that he is still in the FERP program and hence still tenured.
Hank: you wrote: ” My argument instead was that if he taught these ideas in economics classes, then the content of his teaching, not its purported effects on students, would be in question. ”
Let me clarify that I was responding to Jennifer, not to you. I think your points in this column were excellent, nuanced, and accord with my own understanding of the issues. I also think that Jennifer and I agree on the big issues, and I was suggesting a couple of minor nudges to the questions.
I was kidding about the Thanksgiving table. I agree with you that tenure is the real guarantee of academic freedom and I’m not sure you’re in the minority on that so much as that nobody has figured out a way to really ensure academic freedom under any other conditions than tenure and yet we don’t want to admit — or don’t know exactly what to do about the fact — that this poses a massive problem in an era of contingency. Yes, the super-easy answer here is the fact that as an emeritus instructor, unless there’s something we don’t know about their collective-bargaining contract, there is no obligation to rehire him.
I agree with you that we must be cautious about allowing power to determine what is acceptable in academic work. Being cautious, though, to me doesn’t mean that we aren’t also under an obligation to make judgement calls from time to time for what the 1940 statement calls “the common good.” If this were a tenured professor, this might be one of those times. Now, a very fair process would have to be designed and followed and the outcome might not satisfy the majority of people paying attention to the case. The bigger point here might be, though, that academic freedom is not the same as free speech and there are times when the difference is important and resorting to treating academic freedom like free speech (where almost everything goes) is a cop-out.
Jennifer’s last sentence in this comment succinctly sums up the point my column was trying to make.
One of the key differences between Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech is that adjuncts are usually not entitled to Academic Freedom — in the case of CUNY’s contingent faculty, BY UNION CONTRACT (the PSC)!!! And adjuncts make up 50-60% of instructors at most universities.
As a state-run institution, however, the First Amendment SHOULD apply at CUNY and SUNY, as should state labor laws. However, try fighting an adverse decision as an adjunct without having to hire an attorney at $500-900 per hour.
“The bigger point here might be, though, that academic freedom is not the same as free speech and there are times when the difference is important and resorting to treating academic freedom like free speech (where almost everything goes) is a cop-out.”
Yes, Jennifer — we agree completely on that point. I think we’re generally on the same page about the big issues here. My impression has been that the AAUP has adopted an increasingly broad conception of academic freedom over the years. Hank’s qualification of the scope of the concept in this column seems very reasonable to me. And an often unaddressed issue is the options available when a faculty member crosses the line of the common good that you helpfully mention. At the very least, I hope that students think carefully about taking courses from a faculty member who indulges in racist, sexist stereotypes.
Re.: “We conventionally grant considerable leeway in the expression of ideas, so long as we do not act on those ideas in discriminatory ways.”
I would amend this to say that “IN THE PAST, we conventionally grantED considerable leeway in the expression of ideas, so long as we DID not act on those ideas in discriminatory ways.” Over the past few decades, however, (usually non-threatening) “MICRO-aggressions” have been used to stifle the expression of ideas — and, indeed, words, phrases, works of art and literature, etc. that are deemed by EXTREMIST “P.C.” advocates and super-sensitive students to be “un-safe” to fragile egos. I’m not talking about the n-word, which almost never is heard in academic discourse (except maybe as part of a legitimate discussion of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, the films of Quentin Tarantino, or a law school analysis of “fighting words.”
Yay, Barbara Piper, for (1) correcting the error (maybe a joke) about First Amendment rights at a family dinner and, more important, (2) pointing out that “there are numerous cases of long-since-discredited ideas achieving a measure of respectability later.” Look at the changing ideas about the current Plague, where “follow the science” is difficult to do as even mask-wearing was advocated, then discouraged, then approved again — all by Dr. Fauci! And these are life-and-death matters, not just hurt feelings.
He still teaches these IQ differences in class. I have posted his email to be after my address to the Board of Trustees on Twitter (before the article came out). He sent me another email telling me to read a paper on Brain sizes and Intelligence. He also currently sits on RTP committees, Search committee for a Chair of Econ – unelected (he was made chair of that committee and it is expected the current chair who has allowed this to continue would continue in this position because of his close relationship with the current chair.)
What is happening in a lack of leadership and lack of respect for the faculty and the students. Thank you for speaking out and addressing this ridiculous defense put forth by the university.
Pascale S. Guiton: Unless I know more about what he teaches SPECIFICALLY I would afford this prof the right to present material on brain size and intelligence as it pertains to race or any other factor. Of course, I see no counterargument, except a “P.C.” dismissal without any evidence other than he is friendly with the Chair.
As usual, I also see no counter to Justice Brandeis’s famous rule: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.”
Shouldn’t people read ALL the posts before throwing in their own two cents?
To respond briefly to those commenters who expressed uncertainty about the argument of this post, let me clarify. My intent is not to weigh in one way or another on this particular professor and these particular accusations. My point is that, while the university’s position has been that he has a First Amendment right to advance his views, in reality faculty research and, especially, classroom teaching are not and should not always be fully protected by the First Amendment, even at public institutions. Academic freedom does not necessarily protect research that is fraudulent or grossly unscholarly, nor does it protect instructors who persistently intrude political or cultural views largely irrelevant to the course subject into the classroom or who propound ideas that are not accepted by the relevant discipline, especially if they do so in ways that stifle criticism and discussion. Is this professor guilty of any of those sins? I can’t say and it shouldn’t be for me or any of the commenters to decide. This is a blog, not a faculty disciplinary hearing. My point is simply that if the CSUEB administration or an appropriate faculty body believes that it has sufficient evidence of this sort of misconduct not protected by academic freedom, they can bring charges before an appropriately constituted faculty hearing committee that is in essential conformity with the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure (https://www.aaup.org/report/recommended-institutional-regulations-academic-freedom-and-tenure) and in the joint AAUP-AACU Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings (https://www.aaup.org/report/statement-procedural-standards-faculty-dismissal-proceedings). Whether it would be advisable to do so in this case, is also not for me or anyone else commenting to say.
Professor Reichman,
I am a professor trained in the relevant areas (psychology and neuroscience) and your third paragraph is in serious error. It is simply settled science that intelligence can be reliably and accurately measured by IQ tests, and that these tests are strongly associated with a range of meaningful life outcomes. “Bias” has a technical meaning in the field, and most researchers also agree that IQ tests are not biased against subgroups in western society (e.g., African Americans), though their cross-cultural validity is indeed questioned by some. A professor, no less a member of the AAUP, should not rely on science writers (Saini) and race activists (Kendi) when making serious accusations against a researcher. It is possible that Chistiansen is teaching junk science, I have not read his work. But what you report in that paragraph is not junk, and it is in fact the critics you cite (Saini and Kendi) that are on the fringe.
When experts disagree — and even call each other “on the fringe” (or worse) — it is difficult for educated laypersons to come to any conclusions about “science” or any other field. In addition, while conflicting views may be great for classroom discussion and debate in academic journals, Academic Freedom and potential dismissal issues are dependent on fair assessments of data and evidence — not the under-informed opinions of “sensitive” students and under-educated professors who rely on “P.C.” shibboleths and misperceptions.
I am in no position to judge the validity of the claims and counterclaims involved here, especially since we do not have the exact words of the professor in question. However, I tend to lean toward granting ALL profs a wide berth of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech, rather than having them have called “racist” or “insensitive” or having them defend their ideas before administrative boards and dismissal proceedings.
As I reiterated in the comment directly above this one, the intent of this post was not to weigh in on one side or another of this specific case but to highlight how the incident illustrates the difference between academic freedom and freedom of speech. Nor was it my intent to weigh in on the debate over IQ tests, what they measure, how reliable they are, etc. Indeed, I specifically acknowledged my lack of expertise. That said, I don’t believe my claim — “that definitions of ‘intelligence’ vary greatly. Indeed, it is questionable whether or not there is any single thing that can be given that name.” — is inaccurate. A quick Google search finds both scholarly and journalistic literature confirming that. Indeed, consider this from a 2013 article in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/why-people-keep-misunderstanding-the-connection-between-race-and-iq/275876/) written by a fellow of the conservative Cato Institute, no less:
“there is no such thing as a direct test of general mental ability. What IQ tests measure directly is the test-taker’s display of particular cognitive skills: size of vocabulary, degree of reading comprehension, facility with analogies, and so on. Any conclusions about general mental ability are inferences drawn from the test-taker’s relative mastery of those various skills. … Without a doubt, the skills assessed on modern IQ tests are widely applicable and highly valued in contemporary American society. Accordingly, considered just as a measure of skills rather than as a proxy for underlying ability, IQ scores clearly tell us something of genuine importance. They are a reasonably good predictor not only of performance in the classroom but of income, health, and other important life outcomes.”
That does not on its face seem to me as a layperson an unreasonable position, but that is quite different from your claim that “intelligence can be reliably and accurately measured by IQ tests.”
I am reminded here of my doctor who once told me that my persistent headaches could be called migraine because they responded to medication designed to treat migraines, even though I did not have many of the classic migraine symptoms. In a sense, a migraine headache is a headache that responds to migraine medication, in my case Imitrex. Similarly, one might define “intelligence” as whatever it is that IQ tests measure, but, really, how helpful is that?
In this light, my quick Google survey of literature demonstrated to me that whether they are right or wrong the two sources that I cited (one quoted in the SF Chronicle report another from an AAUP magazine) are hardly “fringe” opinions. For examples, here’s a piece from Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-measure. It cites two studies by university psychologists. One, a book, “argued that differences in IQ scores largely disappear when researchers control for social and economic factors.” The second concluded that motivation, including via the promise of monetary reward for higher scores, has a significant impact on test results.
Or take this shorter, more journalistic piece from Forbes, the well-known “capitalist tool”: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/08/14/statistics-show-iq-disparities-between-races-heres-what-that-really-means/. Or a scholarly article published just this summer, which judging from the abstract, suggests a more nuanced view of “racial” differences than that which I suspect this economics professor is propounding: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886920301513.
And then there is this piece on the National Institutes of Health website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927908/. Let me quote from its abstract: “Mediators of IQ score differences … included parent education, income and academic expectations for children and adolescents, and self-education, income and occupation for adults. Results showed that these variables account for substantial portions of variance in all group comparisons, but least for African Americans and adults. The critical influence of cognitively enriching and impoverishing environments on the neurocognitive development of children, and the unequal distribution of these influences across social and economic groups are discussed as complementary with interpretations of acculturation and heredity.”
I will acknowledge that you claim expertise that I don’t have, and my quick Google search is hardly adequate to resolve arguments here. But, again, that is not the point. The point is that if an administration believes that a faculty member’s research or teaching violate professional standards these may — I stress, may — be unprotected by academic freedom, although that faculty member must be entitled to full due process protections before any disciplinary or dismissal action.
A final note: I went to some length not to mention this professor’s name, out of both consideration to him and as a way of making further clear that my intent in the post was not to weigh in on one side or another of this specific controversy, even though the name is easily found in press accounts. (I would note that the university did the same in its public statement.) You, however, use his last name but, at the same time refer to yourself simply as Anon, which according to this site’s rules you are entitled to do. Still, seems curious.
There is not the slightest reason for my continuing to be a member of the AAUP—which is not cheap; I’m currently paying about $265 a year for the privilege—if one of its aims is to assist my university in finding grounds to revoke my tenure and dismiss me should my teaching or research arouse the ire of my colleagues or students.
I pay those dues to obtain a measure of protection from the kind of institutional vendettas for which Prof. Reichman calls here. If that protection doesn’t exist (or, worse, I’m financially supporting an organization that actively seeks to undermine it), I may as well save my money and put it in a rainy-day fund to pay the fees of a lawyer who will in fact work to defend my academic freedom.
As long as your teaching or research only arouse the ire of your colleagues or students you can expect the AAUP to come to your defense. Should you be charged with serious research misconduct or persistently intrude political or cultural views largely irrelevant to the course subject into the classroom or propound in class ideas that are not accepted by the relevant discipline in ways that stifle criticism and discussion, the AAUP will insist that you are entitled to a full due process hearing. But if charges of such violations of professional standards are fairly determined to be true, you should not be protected by academic freedom. Academic freedom does not permit professors to do whatever they want; it is about the scholarly community’s freedom — and responsibility — to govern itself in a spirit of free scholarly inquiry.
“Should you…propound in class ideas that are not accepted by the relevant discipline in ways that stifle criticism and discussion…you should not be protected by academic freedom.”
That is—I trust not deliberately—to ignore the fact that the determination of what constitutes such ideas, and such ways, is subject to a range of external pressures to which professors and even entire disciplines are by no means invulnerable. As one authority on this matter has written, “Our era is one in which it has become increasingly difficult to take certain positions without becoming subject to a flood of abuse….In a growing and distressing trend, college and university administrators, as well as politicians and journalists, may treat faculty e-mails, Facebook posts, and Twitter messages as somehow exempt from the full protections of academic freedom and, arguably, the First Amendment.”
Personally, I prefer the traditional stance of the AAUP, expressed in a 1994 statement the same authority commended to our favorable attention a few years ago:
“On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed. . . . An institution of higher learning fails to fulfill its mission if it asserts the power to proscribe ideas—and racial or ethnic slurs, sexist epithets, or homophobic insults almost always express ideas, however repugnant. Indeed, by proscribing any ideas, a university sets an example that profoundly disserves its academic mission.”
To be sure, even eminent authorities are allowed to change their minds. If the AAUP, for its part, seeks to follow Prof. Reichman down the new path that he has identified above, no doubt many of its members, this one among them, will change theirs about the utility of the organization as a whole.
As with so many things in life (academic and otherwise) there are the fine idealistic words of theory and the more discouraging and realistic ways of the world. Yes, in theory, (tenured) profs have Academic Freedom (unless certain conditions apply) and Freedom of Speech (unless they don’t or are adjuncts).
And, yes, the AAUP will help and (maybe) defend you — unless the political climate is such that your views (or reading list) are not in line with current “P.C.” values.
I suspect that few, if any, are still following these exchanges, but I don’t want to let this go without a reply. It is, in fact, the “traditional” AAUP position that academic freedom constricts what professors may say in the classroom (and in different ways in their research, but let’s focus now on teaching) more than does the principle of free speech in society in general or, for that matter, on campus outside the classroom. You are, of course, correct that “the determination of what constitutes such ideas, and such ways, is subject to a range of external pressures to which professors and even entire disciplines are by no means invulnerable.” And this is surely a welcome caution that even a well-intentioned “jury” of professional peers may be swayed by both such pressure and conventional wisdom. That is why I stressed that efforts to dismiss or discipline a professor for classroom behavior must be made extremely difficult. That said, however, the quote from “one authority” (that is, me) that you follow with is taken out of context. It appears in a discussion of extramural expression, not classroom teaching. Similarly, the quote from the 1994 statement comes from a statement on campus speech codes governing student expression and not classroom teaching.
I have argued vigorously on this blog and elsewhere that the free speech rights on campus of individuals like Milo Yiannopoulos or Richard Spencer must be defended, however disgusting I find their “ideas.” But I would be hard pressed to defend a professor who delivered an identical speech as a classroom lecture. A student should have every right to make disparaging remarks in a dorm discussion or elsewhere about minority students being on campus only because of preferential treatment, including, perhaps, in the presence of those students, as much as such behavior should be discouraged. But do you really believe that academic freedom should protect a professor who opens his class with a statement like this: “I see there are Black students here. I feel sorry for you, because I’m sure you were admitted only because of affirmative action or maybe you are athletes; this class may well be too demanding for you?” I don’t.
As for the AAUP’s “traditional” view, let’s go back to the 1960s when students regularly gave antiwar speeches on campus, sometimes finishing them by burning their draft cards. Such speech and draft card burning were rightfully protected by principles of free expression. But in 1968 a professor at Ohio State “suspended the curriculum” one day and devoted his entire class to an antiwar tirade, which culminated in his burning his draft card. He was fired and the AAUP investigated. While the investigation concluded that the punishment was excessive, it also concluded that academic freedom does not permit turning a class into a personal protest. (“Academic Freedom and Tenure: The Ohio State University,” AAUP Bulletin, 58 (1972).)
But don’t just take it from me. The best single introduction to the principles of academic freedom as developed over the past century and more by the AAUP is Robert Post’s and Matthew Finkin’s 2009 book For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (that is, until my own forthcoming Understanding Academic Freedom appears next year). Post and Finkin, both law professors, are former members of Committee A. Finkin also served on the AAUP’s staff and Post was a General Counsel. Copies of this book are still given to all incoming members of AAUP’s Committee A. They conclude: “Academic freedom is not the freedom to speak or to or to teach just as one wishes. It is the freedom to pursue the scholarly profession, inside and outside the classroom, according to the norms and standards of that profession.” (p. 149). They also note that “public support for academic freedom … would vanish … if academic freedom were reconceptualized as an individual right …” (p. 42). On teaching, they add that “a professor’s pedagogical approach must educate students rather than indoctrinate them. The line between education and indoctrination cannot be drawn without reference to applicable professional norms.” (p. 82-3)
One may disagree with Finkin and Post, or with me for that matter. The AAUP is and should be a broad enough tent to encompass vigorous debates over the application of AAUP principles and the future development of those principles. But we should be clear about what those principles have been and that, with respect to classroom teaching and research, they are not identical to those of freedom of speech. (Another former Committee A chair and current committee member, Joan Wallach Scott, has made the same arguments, also to a great degree on the basis of AAUP policies, in her recent book Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom. See also how she addresses this issue here: https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-and-free-speech-campus#.X6WceBaIZAg.)
And for what seems like the umpteenth time, let me stress again that it is not for me or any other commenter on this blog to determine in this particular case or any other whether professional norms have been violated. My point has been that those norms are more restrictive than what is permitted to the individual citizen under the First Amendment and that academic freedom and freedom of speech are not the same, even though on most campuses and in the country as a whole their fates are entwined.
“But do you really believe that academic freedom should protect a professor who opens his class with a statement like this: ‘I see there are Black students here. I feel sorry for you, because I’m sure you were admitted only because of affirmative action or maybe you are athletes; this class may well be too demanding for you?'”
I don’t feel called upon to engage this straw-man argument, because I am unaware that such a statement has in fact been made by a professor to his or her class. (I suspect it was composed by Prof. Reichman himself, for the purpose of shifting the debate from the actual case he began by discussing to a purely hypothetical one in respect of which he feels himself to be standing on more solid ground).
It’s interesting, nonetheless, that Prof. Reichman cites an OSU case of 1968 as an example of the kind of distinction he would like to establish between academic freedom on the one hand, and “turning a class into a personal protest” on the other. If he is now asserting that those who participated in the Scholar Strike two months ago are, in the AAUP’s view, unprotected by considerations of academic freedom and properly liable to discipline by their respective institutions, I can at least credit him for consistency. But I doubt that that is indeed what he is asserting. Therein lies the very nub of the problem. Those whose protests (or “tirades”) are congruent with the institutional, disciplinary or political imperatives of the moment are highly likely to be found to be “educat[ing] students rather than indoctrinat[ing] them,” no matter to what extent they may “present *as truth* propositions that are in fact professionally contestable…” Others are unlikely to be accorded the same leeway—all the more so at a time when growing numbers of the professoriate are willing to associate themselves with the proposition not only that speech is a form of violence, but that silence is also a form of violence.
To seek to subject not classroom teaching alone, but also publication, to this kind of post-tenure scrutiny is in fact an alarming new departure. Granted, Prof. Reichman, as he points out, is not the only one keen to embark upon it. Only a few months ago, some 350 professors at Princeton demanded the creation of “a committee entirely composed of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist…research and publication on the part of [Princeton] faculty…” But as is shown by this example, and others like it, we do not need the AAUP if what we seek is the establishment and empowerment of such tribunals. We need the AAUP—or, if it is unwilling or unable to do so, some other body—to protect us from their excesses.
The AAUP will, of course, do exactly as it pleases in determining its own interests and objectives. But so will its members, the number of whom, I gather, is not at present increasing.
Thank you for this response. I don’t want to drag out this actually rather interesting exchange, but what you describe as “a straw-man argument” was indeed intended as an imaginary hypothetical precisely because I do not wish, as I have reiterated repeatedly, to make this about the incident that prompted my post. As for your example of the scholar strike, I think that is a somewhat different sort of protest, but I am happy to acknowledge that both the 1968 incident and the scholar strike highlight the difficulty at times of applying principles of academic freedom. As Louis Menand has argued, it would be misleading to assume that “there exists some unproblematic conception of academic freedom that is philosophically coherent and that will conduce to outcomes in particular cases which all parties will feel to be just and equitable.” For the record, however, I too found the Princeton proposal deeply problematic and one that I would, were I on the faculty of a university where such was proposed, forcefully resist. Lastly, on the membership of the AAUP, in recent years it has been growing steadily, not declining, especially among non-union chapters, with new campus chapters springing up regularly by the dozens. How the AAUP and other scholarly organizations will fare, membership-wise, in the wake of the expected cutbacks prompted by the pandemic, of course, remains to be seen. But all signs have shown a renewal rather than a decline of interest in the organization, which, of course, should and no doubt will be open to new ideas and input, as it always has been.
Good to see so many commenters inadvertently making Hank Reichman’s main point for him– namely, that people routinely conflate academic freedom and freedom of expression. Sure enough, along comes “Humanities professor” quoting the 1994 statement “On Freedom of Expression and Campus Speech Codes” as if it were a statement on academic freedom. It is no such thing.
(Though I’m sorry that the deliberate misrepresentations here have made so much more work for Hank.)
I foresee a whole new branch of complaints about “cancel culture” forming in this thread. “I proposed a course on phrenology and my department chair rejected it. Political correctness on my campus has gotten totally out of control. In this essay for Quillette, I will….”
Good to see so many commenters inadvertently making Hank Reichman’s point for him– i.e., that too many people conflate academic freedom with freedom of speech. Sure enough, “Humanities professor” quotes the 1994 statement on speech codes as if it were a statement about academic freedom. It is no such thing.
But if people are really going to go to the mat to defend discredited ideas in the name of academic freedom, then I think I can see a new branch of complaints about “cancel culture” developing here: “I proposed a course in phrenology to my department head. In my course proposal, I offered to bring my own calipers to class and measure my students’ heads so that we could determine which of them would be most likely to become a criminal. My department head rejected my proposal. Cancel culture on my campus is out of control!”
Michael: Once again, exaggeration is being used as a rhetorical point. Phrenology is not likely to be taught in a biology or psychology class but (unsettled, except in the minds of some) brain science might be so taught.
Of course, I assumed you were being humorous and smiled accordingly. 🙂
However, many attempt to use such hypotheticals seriously — as when they say that flat-Earthers will take over astronomy unless Academic Freedom is curtailed.
BTW, Michael, did I meet you many years ago at Georgia State University?
The injection of additional hypotheticals by Prof. Bérubé advances the discussion no further than did Prof. Reichman’s similar effort in this vein—though the display on this blog of mutual support by AAUP insiders affords a heartening example of institutional solidarity in these fissiparous times. Unlike Prof. Bérubé, I do not apprehend a rash of tenured phrenologists suddenly appearing to demand equal space in the university curriculum for their courses unless the changes advocated by Prof. Reichman are adopted. But if the Phrenological Underground should prove to be more entrenched within the academy than I believe it to be, I trust that it may be possible to contain the menace it poses even in the absence of such changes.
The larger point, though—that an AAUP that seeks to devise new expedients to enable universities and colleges to dismiss tenured professors for things they publish may find it difficult to explain to existing members. and potential ones, why they should support such efforts with their dues—goes unaddressed by Prof. Bérubé. However, I see that today he has described as “required reading” an Academe blogpost in which a colleague sets before us what she considers to be an even greater threat to higher education than the phrenological one: her apprehensions “about how ‘academic freedom’ would get weaponized the same way ‘free speech’ has been by the alt-right.” The same colleague, with whom Prof. Bérubé says he “co-wrote” one of his books (the world of AAUP is a small one indeed), calls upon us to consider how the organization’s policies, procedures, and even its 1940 statement on academic freedom may require revising so as to restrain “illiberal people cynically using liberal shibboleths like ‘the only antidote to bad speech is more speech’ to promote and protect hate speech.”
Should these mutually reinforcing initiatives succeed, I have little doubt that the AAUP of the future, its vulnerability to the threat that alt-rightists and utterers of liberal shibboleths within the academy currently present having at last been eliminated, will be a more cohesive organization than it is today. It will also, I venture to predict, be a smaller one.
This is a very silly reply. What, for example, does it mean to say “The same colleague, with whom Prof. Bérubé says he ‘co-wrote’ one of his books (the world of AAUP is a small one indeed)”? Why is “co-wrote” in scare quotes? Does Humanities professor not believe that Jennifer Ruth and I “co-wrote” a book? If there is any doubt about this, one could always look at the cover of the book and see if our names are on it, or, if one is feeling especially skeptical and/or ambitious, read the thing. And yes, people who serve on Committee A for years togethe or who write books together do tend to get to know each other and sometimes follow each other’s work. Coincidence … or conspiracy?
And it is even sillier– and more obfuscatory– to wave away the example at hand in this post and mutter darkly about how the AAUP “seeks to devise new expedients to enable universities and colleges to dismiss tenured professors for things they publish.” We are talking here about a professor who (apparently) teaches and believes that there is a correlation between “race” and IQ. Jesus wept. This nonsense is *precisely* as defensible as phrenology– which, indeed, was more of the rotten fruit from this rotten branch of the pseudoscience that also gave us the era of eugenics. May the ghost of Stephen Jay Gould haunt everyone who is still trying to legitimize these zombie beliefs.
Oh, I definitely don’t consider that any kind of conspiracy is in question. Professors Reichman’s, Bérubé’s, and Ruth’s intentions are openly declared. Whether all three spontaneously came to the same conclusion at the same time about the direction in which they wish to take Committee A, and the AAUP as a whole, is perhaps another matter. But coincidences do indeed occur, and if Prof. Bérubé assures me that this is one of them, I will of course take him at his word.
Prof. Reichman has said more than once, in his blogpost and in the discussion that has followed, that we ought not “to make this about the incident that prompted [his] post.” Precisely so. For my part, I am less concerned about the case of this hapless CSU professor, and more about those that will undoubtedly follow should those aspiring to make the AAUP’s appeal more selective obtain the power they seek to “make judgement calls from time to time for what the 1940 statement calls ‘the common good.'”
Interesting. Well, I personally can assure you that there has been no agreement on Committee A or among the three of us (Reichman, Berube, and I) about a policy change and there has been less discussion of this than I think you suspect. I think we are all individually trying to work out whether the Trump era — which many see as having tested democracy and emboldened white supremacy — combined with the new sense that social media & moneyed interests have challenged the idea that “more speech” is effective in dealing with destructive and inaccurate speech amounts to a need to rethink anything. I hope we do see some serious work on thinking through this and any possible implications for academic freedom by AAUP.
AAUP has always promoted shared governance and faculty expertise over administrative authority. If any new direction is agreed upon, you can be assured that it won’t be to hand HR or DEI lawyers or Administrators more power to arbitrarily discipline faculty for their work.
As for losing members, I think AAUP will gain members if it tries to seriously address some of the lessons learned over the last four years, lessons some groups of us didn’t need to learn but others of us were late to fully grasp.
If you want to continue this conversation, please email me or answer this by using your real name. I understand the pros of anonymity but I think the cons outweigh them.
I think not. There are undoubtedly pros and cons to maintaining one’s incognito, but if I were to doxx myself, I fancy that all the pros that would result therefrom would accrue to Prof. Ruth, whereas the cons would remain exclusively with me. My arguments may be engaged, controverted, or ignored, as readers of this blog may choose, just as effectively—if not more so—by avoiding the genetic fallacy.
As for the benignity of the “new direction,” I am bound to remain skeptical. The history of the academy in this country, and of the AAUP itself, affords many examples of how defining the “present[ation] *as truth* propositions that are professionally contestable” as a firing offense for tenured faculty would have proved in the past useful to those seeking to circumscribe academic freedom (whether they were to be found in the Human Resources department, the professsoriate, university administration, or elsewhere). In the 1940s and 1950s, to look no further for an example, such a standard would have been convenient indeed, and we may well be grateful that the AAUP had not then adopted the course that is now being contemplated.
Much the same can be said of efforts to penalize “destructive and inaccurate speech” on the basis of a particular understanding of what constitutes the “common good.” It will, I trust, be conceded that the meaning of each of those terms has evolved considerably since the mid-twentieth century. It takes little imagination to conceive of the uses to which the “new direction” could have been put had it existed at that time. And I submit that it takes little more to predict how the envelope may be expanded in the future. We may wish to believe that the categories of “alt-rightist” or “cynical weaponizers of academic freedom” will not prove to be as elastic as “fellow traveller” once was, but history offers little reassurance to those who would like to think so.
Lastly, there is never a moment in which democracy is not being tested. The clear and present dangers are always looming; the crypto-phrenologists are always patiently awaiting their moment to rise; and the fifth column is always already within the gates of Madrid. There has never been, and never will be, a moment when a superficially plausible argument can not be made that the present emergency justifies the jettisoning, or “rethinking,” of long-established norms. But a principle once yielded can rarely be reasserted, and then only with immense difficulty. And it is conceivable, the law of unintended consequences being what it is, that there are still worse things than tolerating the presence of a small handful of cranks, or freaks, at CSU or elsewhere.
Two final points: First, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly in these exchanges there is no “new direction.” The AAUP has always distinguished academic freedom from freedom of speech. The 1915 Declaration acknowledged “certain special restraints” on the faculty’s obligation to exercise and model independence of mind in the classroom. For many “immature students,” the Declaration contended, “character is not yet fully formed.” Hence for these students “it may reasonably be expected that the instructor will present scientific truth with discretion, that he will introduce the student to new conceptions gradually, with some consideration for the student’s preconceptions and traditions and with due regard to character building.” The 2007 Committee A statement on Freedom in the Classroom (in the Red Book, pp. 20-27) quoted John Dewey, who believed it was an abuse of academic freedom for an instructor to “promulgate as truth ideas or opinions which have not been tested,” that is, propositions which have not been generally accepted as true within the relevant discipline. “Dewey’s point,” Freedom in the Classroom suggests, is “that indoctrination occurs whenever an instructor insists that students accept as truth propositions that are in fact professionally contestable … without allowing students to challenge their validity or advance alternative understandings.” I could go on. The point, however, is that should Professor Guyton’s charges about this professor’s teaching — and others that I have been given in confidence — prove to be substantial, such allegations could merit investigation as to whether the line between education and indoctrination has been crossed. I won’t speculate about what a faculty committee might determine, however, should such charges be filed, which seems unlikely at the moment.
In this regard, and since Humanities Professor disdains hypotheticals, I will refer to the case of Teresa Buchanan at Louisiana State University (see https://www.aaup.org/report/academic-freedom-and-tenure-louisiana-state-university-baton-rouge-supplementary-report). She was summarily dismissed on charges of sexual harassment in her classroom teaching. The AAUP has never denied that using the classroom to engage in proven behavior that amounts to such harassment should not be protected by academic freedom, nor did the association do so in that case. What the AAUP objected to in that case was that a faculty hearing committee had determined that Buchanan’s behavior did not in fact constitute harassment, but the administration summarily dismissed her anyway, partly on the basis of a secret Human Resources “investigation” with grievous violations of due process.
Second, Humanities Professor is right to caution that categories of teaching, research, or extramural expression left unprotected by academic freedom may prove “dangerously elastic.” It is not too difficult to imagine how the current academic consensus around racism could be manipulated in ways similar to how a consensus about Communism was in the past. And, yes, there are things worse than tolerating a handful of faculty cranks — of all descriptions. But the professor is incorrect to refer so positively to the AAUP’s record in the 1940s and 1950s. It was at best mixed. Indeed, from 1949 to 1956, during the height of the red scare as dozens of faculty members were dismissed for their alleged political affiliations, the national AAUP did not conduct a single academic freedom investigation. People might read Ellen Schrecker’s book, No Ivory Tower, to learn the not so pretty tale in full. It was only in 1956, after most of the damage was done, that the AAUP belatedly launched an omnibus investigation of eighteen institutions. So, let’s not idealize the past.