The events of September 11 2001, the subsequent “war on terror” and the Iraq war have sorely tested academic freedom in the United States as numerous controversies, some of them about September 11 itself and its aftermath, have arisen.
Evidence suggests that the past six years have witnessed systematic attempts to intervene in academic affairs on campuses throughout the US in a manner fundamentally at odds with established principles of academic freedom.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has been diligent in responding to these threats to academic freedom. Since issuing its 2003 report, Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis, the AAUP has shared its observations and recommendations with Congress, federal agencies, academic administrators, numerous faculty groups and other academic associations.
Academic freedom is the indispensable quality of institutions of higher education, as the AAUP’s core policy documents assert. Faculty members have the right to express their views on their subject matter without fear of retaliation or retribution, no matter how offensive those views may be to some or many. Conversely, academic freedom is not free, but entails reciprocal responsibilities and obligations. Freedom in the classroom includes the responsibility not to introduce persistently issues bearing little or no relation to the subject matter, while the freedom of extramural utterance should be exercised with “appropriate restraint”.
While academic freedom is not an invitation to unbridled speech, a judgement about whether a faculty member is unfit to continue because of her speech or writings must be made by the faculty itself on the basis of the standards of the academic community, and not by trustees, administrators or government officials.
As the cases discussed below suggest, efforts to impose externally derived standards on academicians in the US have intensified, as have those to exclude prominent foreign scholars from the country in order to silence viewpoints the government considers offensive.
Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, became the target of an outpouring of criticism for his remarks in a September 2001 essay describing the white-collar victims of the World Trade Centre attacks as “little Eichmanns”, and when a small college in New York State invited him to speak in 2005. In the ensuing furore, intensified by unsympathetic media coverage, additional allegations of research misconduct and plagiarism were levelled at Churchill, which then became the subject of a university investigation, the outcome of which is still pending following review by three separate university committees. In response to the controversy, the AAUP issued strongly worded statements supporting the professor’s right to express his views, however unpopular or distasteful, as an essential condition of academic freedom, and emphasised that serious questions about his fitness to continue must only be judged in the final instance by a faculty body.
In 2005, the AAUP joined with the American Civil Liberties Union in legal action against the US departments of state, justice and homeland security and the CIA, charging that these agencies are illegally withholding information about the government’s practice of excluding prominent foreign intellectuals from the country, based on their political views. The complaint cites the experiences of several foreign scholars, including the Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan, who was preparing to join the faculty at a US university when his visa was revoked, the prominent Nicaraguan scholar and former government official, Dora Maria Tellez, as well as a group of Cuban scholars who were scheduled to attend a conference, among others. Although the case is still pending, initial court rulings have been sympathetic to the plaintiffs.
In 2006, the state of Ohio enacted its own Patriot Act requiring all new personnel at some Ohio public universities, including those accepting teaching positions, to answer politically sensitive and intrusive questions, such as: “Have you solicited any individual for membership in an organisation on the US department of state terrorist exclusion list?” Many commentators have been quick to remark that such questions bear an unfortunate resemblance to those asked by the anti-communist US senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee during the wide-ranging Congressional hearings in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Thus far, we know of no person who has refused to answer the questions, but we await a test case with interest.
As these instances suggest, the climate for academic freedom in the US is very chilly indeed. Yet, unlike the quietude of the academic community in the face of McCarthyism, this time round faculty members, their institutions and the AAUP have responded vigorously to assaults on academic freedom, leading to the cautiously optimistic conclusion that academic freedom is alive and well in the US.
Dr Anita Levy is associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors