In 1916, the New York Times denounced the newly-formed AAUP’s Declaration of Principles in an editorial that defined “Academic freedom” as “the inalienable right of every college instructor to make a fool of himself and of his college by…intemperate, sensational prattle about every subject under heaven, to his classes and to the public…” (Actually, that’s…
And what about one who moves a trashcan (for whatever reason)… should that instructor be fired? This has not been a good week on the academic-freedom front. First, a Research Associate at Florida State University named Deborah O’Connor resigned after posting comments on Facebook like “Take your Northern fagoot [sic] elitism and shove it up your…
“It need scarcely be pointed out that the freedom which is the subject of this report is that of the teacher,” says the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Freedom. The 1940 Statement follows up: Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their…
Thomas Frank, perhaps best known for What’s the Matter with Kansas?, an examination of America’s new conservatism, has an article in Salon, “The New Republic, the torture report, and the TED talks geniuses who gutted journalism.” Toward the end, he writes this: The new press lord’s deeds are all made possible by the shrinking significance of everyone…
Walter Olson at Overlawyered (and reprinted at Minding the Campus) argues that the AAUP is hypocritical and left-wing in its approach to Freedom of Information Act requests. However, the evidence he offers simply doesn’t show this. According to Olson, in the case of Douglas Laycock, “the AAUP was quoted in the press talking in a…
In an article today on the debacle at The New Republic, journalist (and former TNR staffer) Michael Kinsley is quoted in reference to new owner Chris Hughes, “It’s his magazine, and if he wants to wreck it, he can.” This could easily become the tagline for the current age. Certainly for the boards of trustees of our institutions of…
‘Academic freedom is in the eye of the beholder.’ That, I think, will be the most common takeaway by readers of Stanley Fish’s new book Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). After all, he breaks the concept into five “schools”: The “It’s just a job” school (his own…
In their recent November-December Academe article, Jonathan Alan King, Ruth Perry, and Frederick P. Salvucci look into MIT’s decision to build commercial buildings on campus land and make the argument that institutions often put profit before students’ and researchers’ needs. Their article examines the ongoing debate over academic space on campus and talks about how we in…
This is a guest post by Joel Thomas Tierno, a contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Tierno is a professor of philosophy at the College of Southern Nevada; he has also taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Erie Community College, Buffalo State College, and Elmira College. He is the…
This is a guest post by Alan R. Shoho, a contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Shoho is a professor of educational leadership and policy studies and associate vice provost for academic and faculty support at the University of Texas at San Antonio where he has been for the past twenty years. As…