Students For Academic Freedom

Securing Academic Freedom on Campus · 03 March 2004

By Mark Bauerlein--NAS Online Forum, 03/03/04

Last week I testified before the Georgia Senate on academic freedom and Left-wing bias on campus. Conservative activist David Horowitz and U.S. Congressman Jack Kingston also testified, along with two students who'd been ridiculed and harassed by teachers for their conservative views. A few minutes before the hearing began, the Georgia senator who had organized the proceedings received a statement from the president of a small college in Georgia warning against our testimony and any actions the Senate might take. His point was the standard one, that is, that academic freedom precludes any intrusion into faculty governance by outside forces.

As conservatives ask for greater intellectual diversity, this is the rejoinder we're going to hear every time. Defenders of current practices will shout about censorship and zealotry even though our proposals merely ask that conservative opinion be granted a modest place in the curriculum and in student life. Moreover, their accusations will be simple, powerful, and soundbite-friendly, aligned (ostensibly) with democratic ideals and fitted to op-ed and talking head formats.

Stephen Balch has weighed in before on the false premises of the academic Left on this issue, and we need to recognize clearly the objections in their crudest forms. Critics will say that the NAS and others just want to substitute conservative dominance for liberal dominance, or that they want a quota system, or that they license hate speech. Despite the rank hypocrisy of such charges, we should stick to the point. We don't ask for quotas, or even proportional representation, and we certainly limit campus discourse to ideas and beliefs that meet scholarly and humane standards. All we ask is that the university be a full marketplace of ideas, with all respectable viewpoints represented.

The hard part is the academic freedom argument. Everybody values academic freedom, nobody wants legislators intervening in campus affairs, and the public distrusts state control of higher education. As long as professors are able to claim academic freedom for themselves, reforms will stall.

But why is academic freedom assumed to be a right belonging to the faculty? In an article in the Chronicle (subscribers only) a few weeks ago on Middle Eastern Studies and anti-American bias, a professor spoke of academic freedom as a "God-given right." But academic freedom isn't a right; it's a privilege, an extraordinary one. And it isn't granted by God; it's granted by the larger social polity. Professors speak of the university as separate from the society it inhabits, with its own rules and protocols. They're right. In a democratic society, universities occupy a special place, namely, the place in which inquiry is to be unfettered by politics, money, and power. But in return comes an obligation for professors to safeguard the principles of free exchange. It's a social contract: society grants faculty space protected from power politics and business models, and faculty members pledge to uphold the ideals that differentiate the campus from the rest of society.

Academic freedom doesn't precede the contract, nor does it belong exclusively to the faculty. Every member in the campus community must honor academic freedom and be honored by it. It is just as easy for a professor to violate a student's academic freedom as it is for an administrator to violate a professor's academic freedom. For a professor to argue with a student over conservative opinion is altogether fitting and proper, so long as it is conducted with respect and decided on evidence. But for faculty to hire only Left-leaning faculty, teach only Left-leaning thinkers, and explore only Left-leaning opinions is to substitute advocacy for inquiry. For administrators to discourage conservative speakers, while paying radical Leftists five-figure fees, is to throw a mainstream aura around but one narrow range of belief.

The educational costs of such bigotry are obvious, and the ethical example it sets is deplorable. Such behaviors belong outside the campus, not inside, and there is no reason why outsiders should countenance universities that break the terms of the social contract. To be sure, academic Leftists will perceive outside pressure as an infringement of academic freedom. They think that the university is an independent enclave accountable only to itself, and that any incursions from beyond by definition threaten the integrity of higher education. But, in truth, outside pressure arises precisely in order to do the opposite. It is the faculty who have abandoned the ideal, who stifle dissent no matter how learned, who under the guise of a rearguard, adversarial, protest posture rule the campus intellectual world and apportion its many comforts and securities to a slim ideological spectrum.

This is what we must demonstrate to trustees, alumnae, politicians, and parents. Academic freedom isn't the property of the faculty. It is the responsibility of campus dwellers, yes, but the property of all citizens. When faculty members trample on intellectual diversity, they abuse the privileges of the cloister. When they come to believe that they own the campus and all its higher ambitions, they prime themselves for arrogance and righteousness, and others for derision. That's what happens when a social ideal becomes identified with one group.

It is time to expand academic freedom to all constituents of the campus, and to set it forth as a democratic ideal that every citizen has a stake in defending. Left-wing faculty and Left-wing ideas should not be discriminated against, nor should punitive measures of any kind be imposed. Instead, leaders should discuss in the media, in the legislature, and in the schools the meaning and purview of academic freedom. A simple rededication to pluralism, dissent, and debate will put bigotry and bias on the defensive. Just as public protest in the Sixties brought about the advent of Black Studies, Women's Studies, and other programs, perhaps we shall see in the coming years new programs in Western civilization and conservative traditions.
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Mark Bauerlein is a Professor of English at Emory University.

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