BY JOHN K. WILSON
In a June 9 essay for the Washington Post, Stanford professor Emily Levine attacked the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles as a “mistake” for failing to offer a “positive vision” of academic freedom. As the subhead for her essay puts it, “Linking academic freedom to tenure has led to an impoverished definition of the concept.”
Levine complains that the 1915 Declaration “never spelled out exactly what scholars were gaining freedom to do.” I have made my own critique of the 1915 Declaration, but I think the radical advance of academic freedom in the document deserves praise, and Levine’s reasons for attacking it are questionable.
After all, the 1915 Declaration provides an explicit positive justification for academic freedom in “the quest for truth” and “the proper fulfillment of the work of the professoriate requires that our universities shall be so free that no fair-minded person shall find any excuse for even a suspicion that the utterances of university teachers are shaped or restricted by the judgment, not of professional scholars, but of inexpert and possibly not wholly disinterested persons outside of their ranks.”
Levine offers some flawed history of academic freedom to justify her attack on the 1915 Declaration. The worst historical error Levine makes is this: “In 1915, controversies surrounding World War I gave Lovejoy, John Dewey and James Cattell an opening to establish the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). With the war underway and concerns about freedom of speech rampant, this all-star group of scholars drafted its first document, the “Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure.’”
Although the war was barely underway in Europe, America was resisting any involvement in it. There were no wartime restrictions on speech in the US in 1915 because there was no war. The controversies about academic freedom that occupied the AAUP in 1915 had nothing to do with war; they were overwhelmingly issues about economics, unions, and monopolies.
We are quite fortunate that the 1915 Declaration was not motivated by wartime concerns, because the AAUP’s leaders in 1918 displayed a dangerous willingness to sacrifice academic freedom to patriotic fervor. In the statement, Academic Freedom in Wartime, the AAUP made the worst abandonment of the principles of academic freedom in its entire history.
Levine also falsely claims that the AAUP in 1915 saw academic freedom as only applying to tenured professors: “the newly founded AAUP translated academic freedom into a set of formal guidelines that protected tenured faculty from removal in the case of questionable speech or inquiry.” This is definitely untrue, since tenure was not yet a widely accepted practice in 1915, and the 1915 Declaration did not provide formal guidelines and policies for protecting academic freedom. The 1915 Declaration clearly defines academic freedom in abstract terms, not as dependent upon the status of the professor. The 1915 Declaration never discusses tenure, and certainly never limits academic freedom to those who have it.
According to Levine, “the absence of a positive vision for academic freedom untethers its beneficiaries from responsibilities to society or citizenship.” Levine has her history wrong. The 1915 Declaration is the wordiest of all major AAUP statements, and embraces, more than any other AAUP statements, the “positive” view of academic freedom with an emphasis on “the search for truth,” advocating “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.” The 1915 Declaration announced that professors would not only seek their liberties but also “maintain such standards of professional character, and of scientific integrity and competency…” The 1915 Declaration is full of statements about the responsibilities of faculty. In the century since, the AAUP has tended to focus much more on protecting liberties than enforcing professional standards, and that shift is a good and necessary trend. If Levine objects to this progress, she is certainly wrong to pin the blame on the 1915 Declaration.
Levine’s erroneous history extends beyond 1915: “The AAUP revised its guidelines in 1940 and again in 1970, attempting to strengthen academic freedom each time. But in neither case did it attempt to spell out a positive vision of what academic freedom’s purpose was, nor to apply it more expansively. In practice, that has significantly narrowed academic freedom in recent decades, as, increasingly, tenured faculty have been replaced by nontenured instructors.”
This is not true. The 1940 Statement expressed a positive vision of academic freedom’s purpose, “The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” The 1940 Statement also declared that academic freedom applied equally to full-time nontenured faculty: “During the probationary period a teacher should have the academic freedom that all other members of the faculty have.”
The 1970 Interpretive Comments further promoted a positive vision explaining academic freedom (“Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry”), and applied it more expansively, declaring that the protections of academic freedom “apply not only to the full-time probationary and the tenured teacher, but also to all others, such as part-time faculty and teaching assistants, who exercise teaching responsibilities.” It’s hard to get more expansive than “all others.”
As for the threat to academic freedom from the decline of tenure, the AAUP has been at the forefront of criticizing the problem, and working to provide protections for all faculty through policies and support for unionization.
Tenure is an important component to academic freedom, not because professors without tenure are deemed by the AAUP to not have academic freedom, but because professors without tenure are vulnerable to punishment by colleges that have little regard for academic freedom.
For the AAUP, strengthening and expanding tenure helps protect academic freedom, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only tool to defend academic freedom.
Levine is exceedingly evasive about exactly what a “positive definition of academic freedom” is. What is the alternative for academic freedom? Getting rid of tenure only makes a bad situation worse. I suspect that I would consider Levine’s “positive” approach to academic freedom a bad idea if I could figure out exactly what she is trying to propose.
The closest Levine comes to defining her “positive” view of academic freedom is this: “Higher education’s inability to state the purpose of academic freedom enables professors to make spurious claims, whether racism masquerading as scholarship or dubious public health recommendations. Such claims damage academia, fueling calls for the removal of tenure and academic freedom, and criticism of the unfairness of a system in which some academics enjoy absolute freedom, while others have none at all. These claims also hurt society, lending a patina of respectability to practices and ideas that contradict core academic values, like the search for truth and a reliance on evidence.”
So the “positive” view of academic freedom is one that revokes academic freedom for “spurious claims” such as “racism” or “dubious public health recommendations.” What Levine calls a “more principled” version of academic freedom actually seems to be a less principled one, denying the protections of academic freedom for views Levine dislikes.
It’s good to see more attention given to the history of academic freedom and its importance to higher education. And we need critical analysis of how the current structures of academic freedom may fail to promote intellectual freedom on campus (for example, the use of outdated 1940 language in campus policies without the 1970 amendments). But Levine’s essay raises more doubts than it answers, and its flawed history and understanding of the 1915 Declaration doesn’t point to a better way to support academic freedom.
Thanks John. I agree; it’s a strange piece that simplifies and misrepresents the history and blames AAUP in ways that seem wholly unfair and misguided. AAUP understood that a high degree of job security is necessary to protect academic freedom and it managed to universalize this by codifying and dramatically expanding tenure (and not for research but for instruction in general). The rise of non-tenure positions cannot be traced back to some kind of impoverished understanding of academic freedom on AAUP’s part, which is one claim she makes that I find astonishing.
Believe it or not, I also agree with you that an attempt to define a “positive” understanding beyond the importance of academic freedom in serving the common good of a democratic society could be worse than helpful. My sense is that we can and should get at some of the problems Levine sees (racism parading as research, for example) by further developing the principles and procedures that already exist and strengthening them. One such principle would be that academic freedom and free speech are not the same thing and that one’s academic freedom is guaranteed through a collective enterprise that functions through peer review and other forms of vetting the quality of work. Here’s where you and I disagree, I think, John: you seem to think that everyone’s claims are equally valid or that bias inevitably distorts any attempt to distinguish between claims but everything in higher ed — from the grades we give students, to the hiring processes we use, to peer-reviewed publishing, to external evaluations in promotion and tenure — is built precisely to differentiate work that can be trusted and relied upon and that should be promoted and circulated from work that doesn’t hold up under pressure. I trust my peers and due process to make these calls and I worry that those of my peers who get confused about the difference between free speech and academic freedom grow hesitant to do exactly the kind of work that they are called upon to do — make distinctions and judgments that help serve the common good of a democratic society. I should maybe add that this positive definition as I’ve framed it — “serve the common good of a democratic society” — does set some parameters at the outset (so, for example, work that argues against democracy and for colonialism could not be viewed as serving the common good).
I certainly don’t think everyone’s claims are equally valid. But I don’t think validity of political views is a valid reason for censoring claims. I do think professors need to separate how they grade the quality of work from their agreement with its views, and question their own judgment when they disagree with someone, and most professors do that. I think we need policies that clarify and specify the meaning of academic freedom, but I don’t think announcing a sharp division between academic freedom and free speech is either accurate or helpful. I do worry about your interpretation of a positive definition. There is a big difference between having principles that serve the common good (such as academic freedom) and requiring views that serve the common good (such as a ban on support for colonialism). The latter might allow state legislators to decree a ban on supporters of Critical Race Theory on the grounds that this theory divides people by race and therefore undermines the common good.
It wouldn’t allow state legislators to do that because academic freedom isn’t intended for state legislators. Academic freedom is intended to keep state legislators out of the work of the university. Peers within disciplines assess each others’ claims. State legislators have no business making any academic judgments affecting what happens in the university.
> “It wouldn’t allow state legislators to do that…”
In practice, state legislators, and their voters, will decide what state legislators are allowed to do.
They are unlikely to turn over to an unelected professional organization, representing a small minority of those working in the academy, the unfettered right to determine how professors are treated, based on whatever determinations that organization may think it proper or convenient to make at any given time. And in a democratic society, there’s no obvious reason why they should.
Hi anonymous person, Did you read the original article John and I are responding to? Levine’s premise is that AAUP set up academic freedom to fail so the discussion here is about how AAUP should define and elaborate academic freedom. It should go without saying that AAUP’s first and most important premise is that state actors should not determine what happens in the university. As with any power contestations, this is a constant struggle but it is the first principle. The idea is that universities can serve a democratic society precisely by managing their own production of knowledge instead of letting political parties or corporate interests manage it. If you want your state legislature to tell you what to do in the classroom and you think that is somehow more appropriate in a democratic society, then I think you should engage other organizations than AAUP to pursue that line of thought.
> “Did you read the original article John and I are responding to?”
Yes indeed. However, the point to which I was responding was yours. Since the establishment of the public higher-education sector in the United States, there has never been a time when “state actors [did] not determine what happen[ed] in the university,” whenever they considered that the public interest and/or the wishes of their voters it expedient for them to do so. I venture to predict that there will never be a time when they won’t. In the 106 years since the AAUP was established, the influence of the state has been expanding, not diminishing, and there is nothing to suggest that that trend is going to reverse any time soon. That is a reality within which bodies like the AAUP have to operate. They may seek to influence legislatures, and often can do so successfully. They will never be able successfully to tell them: “What we do is none of your business.” Not, at any rate, unless they wish to follow the path blazed by such institutions as Bob Jones University or Hillsdale College.
If you seek a situation in which legislatures will appropriate public funds for higher education but not seek to hold professors, among others, accountable for what is done with them, I think you should engage other organizations than AAUP to pursue that line of thought.
What organizations do you suggest? I recommend you look into NAS, by the way; there are some people over there who are very sympathetic to the idea that elected politicians are better suited to control the production of knowledge than are academics.
I’d recommend whatever political party you may consider most likely to deliver that outcome. Long-shot though it may be, involvement in that body would be more likely to achieve the goal than AAUP will.
As for the National Association of Scholars…well, as my Southern friends often say, bless their hearts.