Posted by Juan Non-Volokh:
In Defense of Academic Freedom (Properly Understood):
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.shtml#1116187351
Professor Richard De George [1]explains what academic freedom is --
and is not -- in today's Washington Post "Outlook" section. He also
notes academic freedom faces threats from both without and within the
academy.
On proposals to create an "Academic Bill of Rights," De George has
this to say:
the controversy over the proposed "academic bill of rights," like
the Summers case and many others, serves to highlight the dangers
to academic freedom from within the university itself. The bill of
rights, which was conceived by conservative activist David Horowitz
and his watchdog group Students for Academic Freedom, would require
professors to present a greater diversity of views on unsettled
issues. It is a reaction on the part of conservative students to
what they feel is the dominance of liberal faculties at many
universities, where the students say that claims made in the name
of academic freedom implicitly permit professors to require that
students hew to a certain political line in order to pass a course,
or where potential faculty members have to hold a certain political
ideology in order to be hired.
Where either is done in the name of academic freedom, it is
certainly an abuse of that concept. A science class is not the
appropriate forum for a discussion of politics, for instance, and
no course should provide a teacher with a captive audience for
Bush-bashing or any other political indoctrination. On the other
hand, students have no "right" not to hear views with which they
disagree. Part of their education arguably consists in having some
of their opinions challenged.
On campuses that are primarily liberal, conservative faculty and
students often feel pressure to keep quiet, not to write on or even
raise certain subjects, and to stifle their dissenting opinions. On
conservative campuses, liberals feel similar pressure. Such
pressure is incompatible with the free flow of discussion and the
free exchange of ideas that academic freedom requires and is
supposed to promote. But no legislature should dictate what has to
be taught in any course, even in the name of balance. The solution
is to promote greater respect for the academic freedom of all, not
to push legislation that would in fact undermine that freedom.
That sounds about right to me.
References
1.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051400064_pf.html
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