Intellectual Freedom

David Rabban provides the first comprehensive synthesis of the case law on academic freedom and the First Amendment at American universities. Responding to the judicial decisions and drawing on the justification for academic freedom as a professional norm, he develops a theory of academic freedom as a distinctive First Amendment right.

Dirty Knowledge explores the failure of traditional conceptions of academic freedom in the age of neoliberalism. While examining and rejecting the increasing tendency to view academic freedom as a form of free speech, Julia Schleck highlights the problem of basing academic freedom on employment protections like tenure at a time when such protections are being actively eliminated through neoliberalism's preference for gig labor. The argument traditionally made for such protections is that they help produce knowledge "for the public good" through the protected isolation of the Ivory Tower, where "pure" knowledge is sought and disseminated. In contrast, Dirty Knowledge insists that academic knowledge production is and has always been "dirty," deeply involved in the debates of its time and increasingly permeated by outside interests whose financial and material support provides some research programs with significant advantages over others. Schleck argues for a new vision of the university's role in society as one of the most important forums for contending views of what exactly constitutes a societal "good," warning that the intellectual monoculture encouraged by neoliberalism poses a serious danger to our collective futures and insisting on deliberate, material support for faculty research and teaching that runs counter to neoliberal values.  

How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning? The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy--theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles--one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion--they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech. In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Bérubé and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Faculty across the nation can develop protocols that account for both the new realities--from the rise of social media to the decline of tenure--and the old realities of long-standing inequities and abuses that the classic liberal conception of academic freedom did nothing to address. This book will resonate for anyone who has followed debates over #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and "cancel culture"; more specifically, it should have a major impact on many facets of academic life, from the classroom to faculty senates to the office of the general counsel.

This volume examines the historical origins of tenure in higher education. The concept of academic freedom and tenure has been a point of discussion between university faculty and administration since the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) established these two concepts in their 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In this book, the author examines the history of these two issues and how they became an integral part of higher education in the United States. In his detailed analysis, the author provides a review of landmark state and federal court cases and evaluates the subsequent impact of those rulings on academic freedom and tenure.

From leaders on the front lines of the battle for academic freedom in higher education, an empowering collection on fighting back against anti-CRT policies, book banning, and more Spanning over 40 years of contested history through to today, The Right to Learn speaks out fearlessly against the far right's decades-long war against intellectual freedom. This essential anthology outlines and contextualizes the culture wars' demonization of critical race theory, Ron DeSantis's "Don't Say Gay" law, and other hot-button issues. With an introduction that places the current crisis within the broader context of the ongoing attacks on American democracy, The Right to Learn features the testimony and analysis of activists, scholars, and attorneys with firsthand experience in the struggle against well-funded conservative groups' assaults on academic freedom. An impassioned, inspired resource for those fighting on the ground for the right to learn, this anthology is structured in 3 parts designed to equip educators with the necessary tools to understand the battle-and to fight back. PART 1 explores educational gag laws, featuring, among others, PEN America staff members Jonathan Friedman, Jeremy C. Young, and James Tager. PART 2 offers perspectives on key issues from those on the front lines- activists, educators, and attorneys like Dennis Parker, director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. PART 3 investigates the implications of undermining academic freedom, with insight from experts such as Sharon D. Austin, one of the professors barred by the University of Florida from testifying against a restrictive voting rights law and a plaintiff in the main legal case against Ron DeSantis's "Stop WOKE Act." As they confront today's attack on higher education, The Right to Learn's expert contributors reveal that what's at stake is the pursuit of the real-world and contemporary knowledge a democratic polity requires

Part of the acclaimed Higher Ed Leadership Essentials series, this book surveys academic freedom's history and its application in today's universities. Academic freedom is once again at the epicenter of the crisis in higher education. A community college instructor in Iowa is pressured to resign after his pro-antifa social media comments garner vicious harassment that administrators find threatening to campus safety. A tenured biology professor at a college on Long Island is threatened with dismissal because she allegedly grades students too strictly. And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a conservative activist calls on his followers to take advantage of online classes to send "any and all videos of blatant indoctrination" to his organization so that it might expose and blacklist "leftist professors." These incidents from the 2019-20 academic year represent only the tip of the iceberg. Academic freedom, long heralded as a core value of American higher education, may now be in as much danger as at any time since the 1950s. But what is "academic freedom"? A value upheld for one's supporters (but not one's opponents) when discussing a polarizing controversy? Or a narrow claim of privilege by a professorial elite, immune from public accountability? In this concise and compelling book, Henry Reichman, who chaired the American Association of University Professors' Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure for nearly a decade, mounts a rigorous defense of academic freedom and its principal means of protection: the system of academic tenure. Probing academic freedom's role in multiple contexts, Reichman draws on a wealth of historical and contemporary examples to offer the first comprehensive introduction to the concept in all its manifestations. Elucidating its sometimes complicated meanings, Reichman argues that academic freedom--like its cousin, freedom of speech--cannot easily be defined but, instead, emerges from the contextual application of guiding principles developed and modified over time. He also explores why the rise of contingent faculty employment represents the gravest current threat to academic freedom; reveals how academic freedom is complicated by both fiercely polarized campus environments and the emergence of social media that extend speech beyond the lecture halls of the academy; and touches on the rights of students in and out of class, including treatment of student protest movements.

This book explores the history of the debate, from 1915 to the present, about the meaning of academic freedom, particularly as concerns political activism on the college campus. The book introduces readers to the origins of the modern research university in the United States, the professionalization of the role of the university teacher, and the rise of alternative conceptions of academic freedom challenging the professional model and radicalizing the image of the university. Leading thinkers on the subject of academic freedom--Arthur Lovejoy, Angela Davis, Alexander Meiklejohn, Edward W. Said, among others--spring to life. What is the relationship between freedom of speech and academic freedom? Should communists be allowed to teach? What constitutes unacceptable political "indoctrination" in the classroom? What are the implications for academic freedom of creating Black Studies and Women's Studies departments? Do academic boycotts, such as those directed against Israel, violate the spirit of academic freedom? The book provides the context for these debates. Instead of opining as a judge, the author discloses the legal, philosophical, political, and semantic disagreements in each controversy. The book will appeal to readers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in scholarly freedom and academic life. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.