The Politics of Academic Freedom

During the research for our 25th aniversary history project, PSU-AAUP's former chapter coordinator Julie Schmid quipped that "academic freedom only exists in the academy." This folk wisdom grows out of struggles, often championed by the AAUP, to secure academic freedom for faculty. The AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure proclaims that higher education's contribution to the "common good" of society "depends upon the free search for truth and its free expression." Like Schmid's comment, however, the Statement notes the limits and boundaries of academic freedom. When professors, as members of a "learned profession," speak or write as citizens, "they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline;" at the same time, "their special position in the community imposes special obligations." Defining those obligations constitutes no small part defining academic freedom itself.

At Portland State University, narrators attested that academic freedom had never been "much of a problem" and that there were no "spectacular cases" on campus; alternatively they noted that "the record here has been really good in that regard." Our research unearthed at least three incidents in which faculty speech or activism came to a crisis that touched on the issue of acdemic freedom.

Historian David Horowitz was a particularly visible and vocal critic of the Veit Nam war. A number os PSU faculty opposed the war in general, however, there were mixed attitudes toward issues like closing down classes or whether ROTC should be permitted to recruit on campus. Many were outraged by Portland police violence against anti-war protestors and some faculty participated in a march of solidarity through downtown in the wake of attacks on demonstrators in the park blocks. Horowitz pushed the bounds of academic freedom on campus when he successfully interrupted a colleauge's class over war-related issues. "He had to go to court on it," recalled Tom Morris. The administration wanted "his head on a plate": fired. The History Department rallied however, independently of AAUP, and affirmed Horowitz's "right to protest." Morris recalled the department's feisty spirit against the administration's pressure: "The hell with you. We are not firing him."

Rather less sanguine was the case of Sharon Brabanac, who Assistant Dean Duncan Carter describes as an "activist student services person." Brabanac lost her position as an Academic Professional at Portland State despite "nothing but positive performance evaluations." For Carter, Brabanac's case typifies the "vulnerability of people in that category, academic professionals." "No tenure-track professor would have that kind of treatment," he affirms. The case highlights another dimension of traditional, AAUP-style academic freedom: that it applies selectively even within the university setting, with staff and students having far fewer protections than faculty at their disposal.

 

 

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Last updated: 11/26/04
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