Who's afraid of academic freedom?

428 Pages·2015·0.12 MB·English

by  Bilgrami

WHO’S AFRAID OF
ACADEMIC
FREEDOM?
WHO’S AFRAID OF
ACADEMIC
FREEDOM?
EDITED BY
AKEEL BILGRAMI
& JONATHAN R. COLE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-53879-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Who’s afraid of academic freedom? / edited by Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan R. Cole.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16880-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Academic freedom—United States. 2. Academic freedom—Moral and ethical aspects—United States.
3. Teaching, Freedom of—United States. I. Bilgrami, Akeel, 1950– II. Cole, Jonathan.
LC72.2.W48 2015
378.1'213–dc23
2014014722
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
Jacket Design: Jordan Wannemacher
Jacket Image: ©National Geographic Creative/Bridgeman Images
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia
University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was
prepared.
For those, past and present, who have suffered because of the absence of free
inquiry.
CONTENTS
Introduction
AKEEL BILGRAMI AND JONATHAN R. COLE
1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM
GEOFFREY R. STONE
2. TRUTH, BALANCE, AND FREEDOM
AKEEL BILGRAMI
3. ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND ITS OPPONENTS
DAVID BROMWICH
4. ACADEMIC FREEDOM UNDER FIRE
JONATHAN R. COLE
5. KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM
JOAN W. SCOTT
6. OBSCURANTISM AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM
JON ELSTER
7. WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT ACADEMIC FREEDOM?
MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS
8. ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE CONSTITUTION
ROBERT POST
9. IRB LICENSING
PHILIP HAMBURGER
10. TO FOLLOW THE ARGUMENT WHERE IT LEADS: AN ANTIQUARIAN VIEW OF THE AIM OF
ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
RICHARD A. SHWEDER
11. WHAT IS ACADEMIC FREEDOM FOR?
ROBERT J. ZIMMER
12. ACADEMIC FREEDOM: SOME CONSIDERATIONS
MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN AND FREDERICK SCHAFFER
13. ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES
STANLEY FISH
14. EXERCISING RIGHTS: ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND BOYCOTT POLITICS
JUDITH BUTLER
15. ISRAEL AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM
JOHN MEARSHEIMER
16. ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE SUBSERVIENCE TO POWER
NOAM CHOMSKY
17. ACADEMIC FREEDOM: A PILOT STUDY OF FACULTY VIEWS
JONATHAN R. COLE, STEPHEN COLE, AND CHRISTOPHER C. WEISS
Contributors
Index
INTRODUCTION
T HE TITLE OF this volume, despite its associative distractions, is meant quite
literally. A primary achievement of the essays in the pages that follow is
to identify and analyze different groups and tendencies in our society that
fear academic freedom and attempt to thwart it, sources as diverse in range
and generality as intellectual orthodoxy, intellectual obscurantism, the interests
of donors, institutional review board licensing, Israeli and other pressure
groups, U.S. legislation and government policy, and actions taken within
universities such as speech codes and restrictions on research …
As a value within the academy, it is arguable that freedom of inquiry is
unique and may be given a lexicographical priority over other values because it
is an enabling value. It enables the pursuit of other values and, therefore, it
cannot be weighed on the same scale as the values it enables, whether these
be “truth” in the outcome of inquiry, or more generally “excellence” in the pursuit
of inquiry, or simply the peace of mind of inquirers … We have said it is
“arguable” that this is so. It cannot complacently be assumed to be so. Some of
the essays in the volume try to provide the arguments by which it may be
established, addressing considerations that are sometimes raised to question
this priority of academic freedom, considerations that appeal to the very values
that it claims to enable.
Such lexicographical priority is, of course, often granted to freedom of
speech and discussion outside the academy as well, so much so that it is
enshrined as a familiar and fundamental law of the land. There are essays here
that wrestle with the question: Is academic freedom just a name for the
practice, within universities, of the political freedom guaranteed by the U.S.
Constitution, or is it, for reasons having to do with the specific nature of the
academy, set apart from that more general freedom?
That question needs to be considered in conceptual and analytic terms, but
also historically. One of the curious features of the value of academic freedom
is how little it has evolved since the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) first articulated the value in its formal statement in 1915,
which was reinforced and somewhat expanded in 1940. The value has not
evolved over time the way the interpretation and scope of the First Amendment
has. While there have been essays and books written about academic freedom
since 1940, it may well be time for a more detailed and considered articulation
of what exactly academic freedom protects and what it does not—and whether
we should reconsider its original intent, which was (as Robert Post has claimed
in a number of essays) that academic freedom is distinguishable from First
Amendment rights and has more to do with the “contract” that exists between
faculty members and others, including trustees, academic administrators, and
outside authorities. Some essays here make an attempt to give some historical
grounding to this issue, while others dispute it by showing its extreme
restrictiveness.
Though questions of academic freedom affect all of society and not just the
society of scholars, though its fruits are reaped by everyone and by most
institutions, a specific group that is most affected by its presence or absence is
the faculty in universities with their special duties of teaching and research.
With this in mind, the editors decided to carry out an empirical pilot survey of
Columbia University full-time faculty opinion on a wide variety of questions
revolving around the academic freedom they enjoy and expect but which is
sometimes under question and threat. The survey is presented here with an
analysis by Jonathan R. Cole and his collaborators. One question that is
derived from the results of the survey relates to the hierarchy of values in a
university: Is academic freedom seen by the faculty as a special enabling value,
or is it considered by most contemporary faculty members as one among a set
of contenders for priority? The fourteen vignettes contained in the empirical
study, which in some cases asked faculty members to choose among
competing university values (one of which was always free inquiry or academic
freedom, although that was never explicitly mentioned in the survey), suggest
that most faculty view academic freedom as essentially freedom of speech. The
survey also suggests an erosion of certain core values within the academy. Is
academic freedom one of them, as apparently are values like disinterestedness
(exemplified in, among other things, the normative prohibition against faculty
members profiting from their discoveries)? The pilot study raises more
questions than it answers, one of which is whether different major universities
and colleges place different weights on these various values. It is fair to say that
ever since John Coulter in a celebrated address stressed the value of
Lehrfreiheit to the idea of the modern research university, followed several
decades later by the equally and rightly celebrated Kalven committee report,
the University of Chicago has been something of a pioneer in this country on
the matter of the centrality that academic freedom came to have in higher
education. A comparison of other universities with the University of Chicago on
the question of freedom of inquiry may therefore be one way to assess these
differential weights. Two essays here that focus on the University of Chicago
may provide a start in helping to make such a comparative study possible.
Taken together, these essays powerfully convey how no freedom can be
taken for granted even in the most well oiled of functioning formal democracies.
It is in the nature of power to resist the possession and exercise of freedom by
those over whom it exercises power. And power, as we also know, does not
threaten freedom always by coercion or, to put it differently, the opposite of
freedom is not necessarily always coercive agents and policies and institutions
but the presence of much less easily identifiable tendencies. The modern
university is not a medieval cloister and is as subject to the political and