BY CATHRYN BAILEY

I was sitting in my high school French class the first time I got called to the principal’s office. I don’t recall what the “controversial” newspaper story was about, but we student journalists explored issues such as drunk driving, race relations, and graduation requirements. I don’t even remember if I had actually written the offending article, but I was the editor, so off I went to absorb the principal’s stern warning to stick with more “appropriate” subjects. Some months later I was called to the district superintendent’s office across town and offered the same “friendly advice.” Fortunately, my high school newspaper advisor had taught us a lesson I’d already learned from watching my father all my young life: sometimes speaking out was not just my right but my duty. The lesson applied, too, when, a few years later, the Kansas City ACLU asked me to testify on behalf of a new cadre of student journalists at my alma mater facing ever more assertive administrative crackdowns.

I went to college with the help of a journalism scholarship, although ultimately I majored in philosophy. Largely through early exposure to Socrates, I made an easy leap from advocating for freedom of the press to championing academic freedom and free speech more broadly. The public good, as well as the flourishing of every worthwhile human endeavor—indeed, the possibility of having a meaningful life at all, per Socrates—depended upon individuals following their own intellectual lights, even if this sometimes led to uncomfortable or mistaken conclusions. Accordingly, I cannot help but connect the authoritarian attacks on journalists in recent years with recent attacks on academic expression so vital for research, teaching and learning. Unsurprisingly, violations of academic freedom seem to be cropping up across the nation, with the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to crank up ongoing efforts to silence loudmouths, the “uncivil,” and “uncollegial” faculty with their “unfortunate speech.” Internal critics or anyone who dares to present a supposedly “unflattering” image of the university appear to be prime targets. Against this backdrop of fear, of course, employees often hesitate to speak up, at least temporarily, further emboldening administrators eager to distance their brand from the opinionated faculty they fail to support. Apparently, such reactionary administrators do not realize that few images are as unappealing in democratic societies as universities that use strong-arm tactics to attempt to stifle dissent.

While universities provide dashboards documenting positive COVID-19 cases, they do not track concurrent damage to the ethos and morale of campus employees—we who are charged with nurturing a spirit of curiosity, brave exploration, skepticism, and critical thinking. What happens to teaching, learning, and research when professors see vocal colleagues lose their academic programs or jobs without due process? What happens when another colleague’s life is dragged through hell by frivolous administrative “disciplinary” procedures? What happens when we learn that administrators are combing through emails and social media, or actively seeking complaints against “difficult” employees? What happens when early retirement grows more attractive amid punishing workload increases or increasingly harassing administrative scrutiny? In short, what happens when administrators decide that their institutions are too economically unstable or ethically insecure to withstand normal critique or dissent, and healthy, vigorous debate about basic values and policies?

The erosion of academic freedom, coupled with the rise of authoritarianism, threatens to set our universities and our civil society back for generations. While some university leaders have responded to this moment by doubling down on supporting faculty rights to free expression, others seem inspired to suppress dissenters. When contrasted with a US president who routinely and unsubtly calls for critics to be harassed, kidnapped, jailed, or killed, university administrators who expect conformity from professors and students “for the good of the university” seem pretty tame. They are, perhaps, not so different from those well-meaning high school principals and paternalistic superintendents.

Nothing we are witnessing in the pandemic is new. In fact, the American Association of University Professors exists largely because of such concerns, and AAUP documents detail relevant precedents, policies, and strategies, especially collective bargaining. Any employee in chronic fear for their job security or working conditions—because of, for example, workload speedups, threatened layoffs, or frivolous reprimands—is at the mercy of university managers. However reasonably we might expect university administrators to behave in normal times, the temptation for opportunistic authoritarianism now—disguised through “business-as-usual” budgetary interventions or disciplinary procedures—is simply too great. The AAUP, in fact, has launched an investigation of a new flood of academic governance violations since the pandemic began.

What pushes universities’ behavior into the realm of tragedy is that, in the medium and long term, they will almost certainly produce consequences opposite from those intended. After all, Trumpism has inspired ever more outrage, dissent, investigation, and whistleblowing to counter the assertion of brute force and authoritarian bravado. At universities, silencing efforts of any sort are guaranteed to create further dissent because a high tolerance for speech is built into many professors’ and students’ very definition of “university.” While universities may, in the short term, be able to excise or quash unwelcome voices through targeted attacks on individuals—and, if history serves, these will disproportionately be social justice advocates, especially people of color, international faculty, Jewish people, and LGBTQ folks—the dissent and critique will rage on.

In fact, it’s incredibly instructive to consider the current academic scene with Socrates in mind. He was, evidently, so brilliant and wise that he would probably still be studied and revered by many even if his life had come to a peaceful and natural end. But the long lasting and irresistible poignancy of Socrates’ legacy comes not from his intellectually honest, tirelessly clever, and sometimes annoying debates with folks across age and class lines but from the death sentence authorities brought against him. Socrates’ energy, intellect, and tenacity made him the “gadfly of Athens,” but it was a reactionary edict from a thin-skinned governing class that turned him into a timeless martyr for academic freedom.

Guest blogger Cathryn Bailey is professor of gender and women’s studies at Western Michigan University.