Academic Freedom

Academic freedom refers to the ability of teachers, students, and educational institutions to pursue knowledge without unreasonable political or government interference. Included within this concept is protecting the right of universities and colleges to engage in all aspects of intellectual activity and a faculty’s autonomy in deciding what and how to teach and what research to conduct and publish. It seeks to promote the free exchange of ideas, scholarly debates, and the search for knowledge.

Academic freedom encompasses distinct rights for the individual and for the institution. Individual academic freedom protects the individual professor and governs the relationship between a professor, university administration, and external authorities. In contrast, institutional academic freedom safeguards the university as a whole from government or other outside interference. It permits the university to select its faculty and to determine areas of study, appropriate teaching methods, and which students to admit.

Although the concept of freedom of thought and expression has ancient roots—Socrates asserted it—the claim of academic freedom is more recent in origin, having come to be recognized in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is sometimes connected with the founding of Leiden University in 1575 and the rise of social and economic liberalism.

Academic freedom developed within the United States as protection for individual teachers. After the Civil War, the goal of higher education shifted from training students for the clergy and elite professions, such as medicine, to training students for practical jobs, such as those in government and business. As a result of this shift, professors sought control over their research and curriculum. They desired to divorce themselves from the governance of academic trustees and administrators that marked pre–Civil War education.[Page 54] To accomplish this, professors looked to the model of their German counterparts. In Germany, academic freedom, or Lehrfreiheit, stood for the idea that faculty have freedom to teach and control their research, and Lernfreiheit, the corresponding right of students to pursue their own course of study.

Before academic freedom had any legal significance, professors formed the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and in 1915 set forth its General Declaration of Principles. The principles assert that higher education and professional autonomy require freedom for faculty in research, publication, and teaching and identify peer review and tenure as the devices for achieving these ideals. Peer review allows fellow professors to judge a faculty member’s competence as a teacher and a scholar, and tenure provides continued employment to those faculty members who have earned professional competence as judged by their peers.

By 1940, nearly all major American universities had joined the AAUP’s approach to academic freedom. The organization’s Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued in 1940 reiterated its 1915 policy and endures to this day. Although the 1940 statement is not law, it has influenced court decisions, been incorporated into many faculty handbooks, and has the support of hundreds of professional associations. Thus, the 1940 statement of principles is often regarded as the norm of academic practice in the United States.

The Judiciary