Focus 580; Academic Freedom Under Fire

This morning in this hour we'll be talking about the issue of academic freedom. This is something that people on college campuses and universities have have thought about have talked about have worried about for a long time. However it seems that in recent years this kind of worry and this kind of conversation has grown and it's concerned it's been expressed by people who are students and administrators and faculty people who define themselves as liberals and people who define themselves as conservatives. A wide range of people are concerned about the economic freedom the idea of academic freedom is shrinking and it is getting increasingly difficult for people in academic settings to have free exercise of their rights under the First Amendment. We talked this morning with John Wilson. He has been following this issue for quite a long time he is moment is a candidate for a Ph.D. at Illinois State University in normal in the Department of Education in ministration and foundations and he is in fact is writing his dissertation on the history of academic freedom in America. He's the founder of creator founder of a

website that tracks this issue. That's w w w dot college freedom dot o r g. So if you have internet access you can go there and you can take a look at that. He's the author of several books including how the left can win arguments and influence people a tactical manual for pragmatic progressives published by The New York University Press in 2001 and then an earlier book from 1995 titled The myth of political correctness the Conservative attack on higher education published by the Duke University Press. And in addition to all that he's the co-founder and coeditor of the indie that's an alternative weekly newspaper with a circulation of 4000 that's based at Illinois State University. He is here in Champaign Urbana to talk about academic freedom as part of a long running lecture series on the campus called Know Your university this place that takes place at the university y on Wright Street at noon on Tuesdays. So if you're interested in hearing more from him and you're here in and around the campuses it's free and open anybody who would

like to attend so you should feel free to go over their questions here on this program our Welcome to the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well thanks very much. Well I'm glad to be here just to start out I guess people who are in higher education know what we're talking about when we use a term like academic freedom although I think even for them once you start getting into talking about specific examples. People might want to start quibbling about well OK. What really is you talking about here you are simply talking about freedom of speech. Are you talking about something that's unique to academic environments. What is it so I mean how how do you go about defining academic freedom. Well there's lots of different definitions that people try to do but basically academic freedom refers to what goes on within educational institutions and refers to freedom of

research freedom of teaching and the freedom of those involved to be to act as citizens. That is to speak publicly without punishment and and those sorts of things and so it's in many ways it overlaps to a great extent with freedom of speech and academic freedom. It was originally developed really by the American Association of University Professors which was founded in 1915 at a time when there really wasn't this kind of constitutional protections for freedom of speech and the idea was to create a kind of protection for professional educators that they would that it would be the educators the faculty who would judge the quality of each other of themselves. And so that he would not be affected by various kinds of political influences and intimidation and that that would that kind of freedom for professors would create the best atmosphere for research for teaching as well as to create an atmosphere on campus were free

free exercise of one's political rights. So it's not it's it goes beyond party. Partly it maybe has some connection to what people do professionally what their discipline is and their being able to express heretical ideas about geology or whatever it is they do. But it goes beyond that to the idea that it says essentially you. You should be entitled to your right to express yourself on whatever subject. Particularly when we're talking about politics. And it needn't have anything to do with what it is that you teach. Right and that's actually I think to the surprise of the AUP and lots of others the most contentious issues have been dealt with. The kind of political speech or what the AUP terms extramural outre and says because of her she have to have an academic term for what is political speech and that those have been among the most contentious historically and even today those of the most likely to get a professor in trouble or someone in trouble is the not necessarily what they say in the classroom which most people don't really know about

not what their research is all about which most people don't care about. But really what they say publicly about a controversial issue and I guess too there is also this idea underpinning all of this is there is this idea that says what the university is supposed to be about is is open. Sometimes aggressive but you hope also respectful kind of argument about ideas and that it ought to be a place where you can put an idea out on the table and have a reasonable discussion about it without somebody being shouted down because what they're saying is troubling or are not popular. You know whatever I mean the idea is that at least you should be able to raise ideas and discuss them even if you can't. You know if you can't do it at the university where can you do it. Yeah well I think that's a that's a good summation of what the contemporary view or an ideal of academic freedom is. It often falls short of that in actual practice but I think

historically that's not always quite so much the case much earlier there was a conception of the university as a as a place where teachers were supposed to act like professionals. That is that they wouldn't engage they would be above politics it would be an apolitical institution devoted to to learning and not politics in that it would be protected by politics by in essence banning politics from within. And that's been a strong trend throughout the history of higher education. So people now four people have been in within higher education within universities have been arguing I'm sure about these things for a long time. So these issues are these concerns aren't really new. Do you think that is the case that we recently you know say you know as within the last decade maybe or or a little bit more that somehow this issue there's been more contention around freedom of speech or that more people are saying they think that there is there that freedom of speech

academic freedom is under attack. Well there's certainly been an argument particularly from the right starting in the early 90s about political correctness and basically the thesis that. Universities are controlled by left wing ex hippies and that these these people are imposing their ideology on academia and infringing on the rights of conservative students. And so that's been for the last 15 years a really powerful argument that's been going out there. I don't share with that that thesis in my first book was really trying to demonstrate that the TSAs wasn't right that there wasn't some kind of new attack on conserves students what was new in academia what was unique starting in the 80s and 90s is that occasionally the victims of abridgement of free speech particularly by ministers or even by professors that the victims of these were sometimes conservatives as well as liberals. And that was quite unusual because for most of the

history of academic freedom it has been the left that has been targeted. And so that really brings up the question now the Conservatives like to say that now that we have left wingers in the trail of academia we need to do something about them. One of those is David Horwitz of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles who's proposed an academic bill of rights and who has. Try actually there's been introduced his legislation in Congress. There are various efforts in Colorado and other states in various campuses to enact it. And basically Horwitz his position is that the university is corrupted by all these left wingers who dominate it. And so you need to go to the political system and you need to impose a kind of a political University unbiased university so that there is fairness to everybody. And of course the question that that I raise in that is that I really question as to whether which is really point out a dramatic reduction

in academic freedom that's been going on or if he's part of a continuing kind of right wing attack on academic freedom that's gone on for decades for McCarthyism and early on. So I think the question of whether academic freedom is really less than it was in the past is something of a difficult historical question to really answer it's hard to compare different areas. There's certainly a lot more contentiousness Now there's a lot more advocacy groups dealing with it a lot more lawsuits about it. All those things I think those tend to protect academic freedom better but there are all sorts of reasons to think there are threats to academic freedom both from the right and from the left today. Well that's and it seems to me that's a that's a significant point to make is that people of all political persuasions be as I said people who define themselves as conservatives people to define themselves as liberal feel that they are under attack under attack. People are people on both sides feel that they're there are under attack. Right now I'm a little skeptical about you know just because someone feels like they're under attack or

feels that their rights every bridge doesn't necessarily mean that it's the case. I think it requires a little more examination. And there is a danger partly because. In the public debate you have a great many conservative foundations that are very well funded that that have a particular focus on these kind of issues that if you just listen to the public debate about this you may get a distorted picture of what's really going on campuses. If you have all of these different groups accuracy in academia a foundation for the Individual Rights in Education. David Horwitz is group students for academic freedom. All these groups no indoctrination who are gay all of these different websites and foundations that are collecting anecdotes that are collecting examples that are providing legal aid to people in trouble. If you only look at that you may miss all of these people victims of censorship on the left who don't have the same kind of apparatuses to appeal to. We're talking this morning with John Wilson. He is as I mentioned beginning he is a

graduate student at Illinois State University is working on his Ph.D. there he's writing his dissertation on the history of academic freedom in America and it's something that he has been following for some time as I mentioned he has a website where he catalogs instances of problems with academic freedom college freedom dot orgy. He is the author of a couple of books including most recent how the left can win arguments and influence people and is also the co-founder of an alternative weekly newspaper based at Illinois State University the Indy and his here to give a talk on the campus in the series know your university today at noon. Questions are welcome. People can help us by trying to be brief just so we can keep things moving along with anybody's welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Bloomington Indiana to start us off your line number four. Well. I mean I give two examples. I've been my own academic freedom. First with the denial of the right to make a

reasonable pro-lifer the fly on the can. By the by the campus right to life organization. You have a family and. They have some posters of the results of abortion. And they want to post them.