Academic Freedom: Easy Cases Make Lousy Law

Stanley Fish is at it again in The New York Times, telling the rest of us what academic freedom ought to mean (not much, I think). Leaving aside the fact that Stanley Fish is a big shot who doesn't need to worry about academic freedom, his latest opinion piece starts with what seems to be an absurd example. Apparently, one Denis Rancourt, soon to be late of the University of Ottawa, is in the midst of a dismissal proceeding because he gave the students in his physics course A grades on the first day of class (because he doesn't believe in that students should be graded) and used the course as a platform for airing his views on political activism instead of teaching physics. Well, duh! Yeah, people are likely to get fired for doing that, but is that what academic freedom is about for most university faculty? If so, fire everybody and rebuild the university from the ground up.

I think it is important in research universities that faculty be protected from being fired when they do research and teach about controversial subjects. I think faculty in all colleges and universities should be protected from being fired because they cover what may be sensitive or unpopular topics as part of their courses. But I don't think that college faculty should be able to write or say anything they please, whether it is connected to their academic subject or not, whether it is uttered in a classroom or a scholarly journal or not, and be protected by academic freedom. If you are teaching economics, you should be able to be critical of the economic policies of whoever is in power without fear of being fired. If you are teaching a course in which the subject is relevant to the course material, you should be able to discuss abortion, global warming, evolution, assisted suicide, or whatever it is without being canned because a student, administrator, parent, or third party finds the subject unpleasant or distasteful. If you are teaching a course about community activism, getting students engaged in community activism should not be grounds for being fired. But if you are teaching basic physics, for example, that's what you should teach, and you should keep your discussion focused on the syllabus and not go running all around Robin Hood's barn talking about whatever interests you or makes you angry at that moment.

I think the hardest thing about giving some form and limits to academic freedom is that there is no consensus about what a university education consists of and what the goals of such an education are. There is little agreement about what the content of individual courses should be. And what standards exist are often established by academic professional associations that have their own agendas. Even so, one should probably be able to arrive at some basic notion of what the content of "Introduction to Biology" is and agree that calling Rush Limbaugh a fascist pig in class is not relevant and not protected by academic freedom.

At least, so I think. Academic freedom should not be the absolute protection from the consequences of the real world that some academics would like it to be, but I do think some protection of specifically academic speech, in class and in publications, is needed. Students don't benefit from having their instructor complain about his divorce when they are supposed to be studying "Paradise Lost" (haha, that's a joke), and they also don't benefit from not having their ideas about religion, politics, social order, ethics, race, or whatever challenged when it is relevant to the subject being taught. Many of the students I teach have religion-based problems with the idea of assisted suicide. I don't think I should be fired for teaching about something that disturbs a student's comfort level if it is part of the course.

However, if I am teaching a course in criminal law and go off on a rant about why Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank are impeding peace in the Middle East, should that be protected? I don't think so. But unless Big Brother is going to monitor everything one says and does in the classroom, how will anyone know? And if a student "informs" on a faculty member for straying from the subject of the course, how is one to protect oneself? I don't know that either. Life is certainly less stressful when one can shelter under an absolute cloak of academic freedom. But how far can academic freedom and autonomy go? Beats me.