This is the last (I hope) of three posts on a topic I’m reading about: academic freedom (I have to be on a panel about the topic in June). Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. I won’t reprise what I said in those posts except to summarize their main points:
Post 1: The “clash of ideas” touted by Mill and others as the primary virtue of free speech, assuming that this clash will produce the truth, is in fact ineffective at furnishing us with the truth, for truth is ascertained not by a collision of ideas given equal weight, but from empirical investigation (“science construed broadly”). Nevertheless, free speech is a sine qua non for democracy, whose working reflects popular opinion, and popular opinion is the foundational turtle of democracy.
Post 2: Academic freedom, the right of scholars to study, research, and teach what they want without interference, is essential for finding the truth about anything (“truth” is what exists in the universe). This does involve the clash of ideas mentioned above, but not all ideas are regarded as equal under academic freedom: some have more credibility than others, viz., evolution vs. creationism. Further, unlike the egalitarianism of the public square, academic freedom assumes a meritocracy and also involves scholarly behavior that would seem to (but doesn’t) violate the First Amendment, like compelled speech (a professor, for example, must teach her topic and not some other topic). Finally, scholarly standards differ from discipline to discipline, and so the notion of “what academic freedom entails” will also differ: “success” in doing literary criticism, for example, is very different from “success” in molecular biology. I maintain further, that the notion of “truth” isn’t relevant to much of humanities, for example literary criticism, music, art, or ethics. There is no empirical truth to be found there, but nevertheless the clash of ideas is still essential to dispel error. (“You can’t prove that Spinoza said that.”)
The more I read, the more disagreement I find about what academic freedom really means and how it relates to free speech. Is it covered by the First Amendment? (some say “yes”)—or is it something different? Is academic freedom something possessed by professors, universities, students, or all of the above? I would answer to the first part “no,” since “freedom of thought” isn’t covered by the First Amendment. But I read last night that the Supreme Court has deemed academic freedom not only a First-Amendment right, but one that applies to all universities, be they public or private. (The First Amendment applies only to public universities, since they’re an arm of the government, though many universities voluntarily adhere to its standards).
As I said, every private school, including Hamline University where a professor was fired for showing an image of Mohammed, has academic freedom for its faculty; the fired Hamline professor was defended by many (including the AAUP) for having her academic freedom violated, and she settled with Hamline. (The President of the College subsequently resigned.
I emphasize that when I say that many areas of the humanities are incapable of finding truth, that is not to denigrate them or deem them inferior to science (see a list of their areas here). For humanities have their own ambit. Philosophy keeps us thinking straight and prevents us from falling into error, literature puts us into the shoes and minds of other people, and music and art give us beauty. Life without humanities would be dull indeed, and I’ve always said that in general scientists know more about and appreciate the humanities more than humanities people know about and appreciate science.
This leaves one question: what about institutional neutrality—the principle that universities should not make ideological or political pronouncements unless they bear directly on the mission of the university? (This was of course first embodied in Chicago’s Kalven Principle.) The purpose of this principle is to avoid the chilling of speech that would occur if a university establishes an “official” position that students and faculty would be loath to violate. (Everyone, of course, is free to voice their personal opinion according to the First Amendment: you just can’t do it in the name of the University. And our late President Bob Zimmer said that he was reluctant to give his own personal opinion because it could be taken to represent the University of Chicago’s position.).
By impeding the chilling of speech, Kalven also impedes the chilling of research and teaching. If, for example, a college held the position that sex was not binary, and that there was a spectrum of sex in humans, researchers would be reluctant to either publish, work on, or make that claim. (The President of Spectrum U. would be Agustín Fuentes.)
Thus institutional neutrality is the rope that ties together free speech and academic freedom. Any university worth its salt—one that wants to foster discourse and consider all ideas on their merits, however offensive—should adhere to the three prongs of Kalven, academic freedom, and free speech. It’s a pity that so few Universities follow all three (only 30 American universities have adopted institutional neutrality; and that’s out of 2,637 four-year colleges!).
And so endeth this homily.
All excellent points, and clearly expressed. You will be a fierce presence on that panel, and one to be reckoned with.
Well written, boss.
But I’m not sure STEM is any less infected by anti-free speech wokeism than the arts.
Just my feels here – but I’d say STEM was slower to catch up with the 2014 onwards mania but some disciplines in STEM have made up for lost time.
There’s a welcome vibe shift (with Kalven et al as you say) but the pendulum doesn’t just swing back to sanity….because…. an entire generation has been poisoned. Woke is all they’ve experienced. You only need to be insane for a decade and everybody under 15 (memories don’t start until about 5) is “dosed”.
In our bubbles: mine, yours, our friends, WEIT commenters etc. we might not meet these kids.
D.A.
NYC
It is a fine thing that nature, the universe, doesn’t give a toss what we piddly humans declare as a truth. That said, we individuals who want, seek, find, listen to it, these truths, for my mind are richer for it I am glad of being in a time where you can with relative freedom.
Does PCCE view the shutting down of Harvard’s ability to enrol international students as an interference with the academic freedom of Harvard? I gather the refusal to allow Harvard to enrol international students is a response to Harvard’s refusal to provide records of the participation by foreign students in protests. Does this touch on both free speech and academic freedom – the freedom of the University to control admission to its academic programs?
No, it is odious and may well be illegal but is not a violation of anyones (sorry apostrophe key broken) academic freedom as this does not impede researching, thinking, or teaching what you want. At least that is my opinion but I am no expert.
Not “participation by foreign students in protests”. Crimes.
Information about crimes allegedly committed by visa-holders is among the “derogatory information” the U.S. State Dept. uses to determine if the continued presence in the United States of the visitor is inimical to U.S. domestic or foreign- policy interests. It seems clear that if the State Dept. got this information it would be within its sole power to revoke the visa and deport the individual. What’s at issue is whether the Administration can revoke visas wholesale if a university doesn’t cough up the information about its students’ arrests for criminal behaviour.
Canadians who hold visas allowing them to study or work in the U.S. or stay longer than 180 days are acutely aware of how much on their good behaviour they need to be in order to remain as guests in America. (Unless they are living in sanctuary states or cities where the cops don’t or can’t look into immigration status when they arrest us for drunk driving etc.) This is not draconian power.
Lawyer here. Information on crimes committed by anyone should be solicited from the appropriate authorities, not from a university or employer. The potential for abuse of such a request is huge, especially coming from an administration that has already invented and promoted false claims of gang membership, murder, rape, and other violent crimes to justify denying immigrants due process rights.
There is also a difference between arrests and convictions. Harvard may have reliable information on any arrests of its students and any charges that led to those arrests, but the more important issue is whether or not a student has been convicted of committing a crime. A university may have no information on that issue, since the judicial criminal process takes place outside of the Ivory Tower.
I take a simple view. The state should be tightly constrained by due process in its ability to punish (deprive of life, liberty, or property) anyone on its soil but it should be free to kick out pretty well anyone it doesn’t like, who isn’t a citizen. It should have broad powers to ferret out those visitors it doesn’t like and make sure they get put on a plane.
Arrests vs convictions are a distinction without a difference here. A visa-holder doesn’t have to be convicted of a crime for his visa to be revoked, although a conviction is a pretty sure way for it to happen even to permanent residents, as Canada does. The State Dept. just needs to receive derogatory information about the individual and, according to Wikipedia, appealing a visa revocation as Ms. Osturk is doing is almost never successful. A person who no longer has a valid visa (or never had one in the first place) must leave the United States. I think you might be wishfully implying due process rights for “immigrants” that don’t exist in this context. They maybe should, but I don’t think they do.
I grant that the university may not be in a position to know if the municipal police have arrested a student downtown on a Saturday night. However one would think that university police forces do keep records of whom they arrest on campus and then turn over to the municipal authorities (for them to release without laying charges.) This is a law-enforcement authority function. And if the university suspends or expels a student for academic/conduct violations, it has to report the cessation of his enrolment to the visa-issuing authority, again without conviction of a crime being necessary. Thus the university already agrees to act as an enforcement arm of the State Dept. when it accepts visa students under the SVEP. If it doesn’t want to be this policeman, it can opt out of accepting foreign student visitors.
I suppose the Courts will tell us eventually what the law is here. It strikes me as similar to the struggle for primacy between the Pope and the King culminating in Henry VIII’s break from Rome. Ultimately the Government, not the universities, must decide who gets issued a visa and who loses it.
“Arrests vs convictions are a distinction without a difference here. A visa-holder doesn’t have to be convicted of a crime for his visa to be revoked…”
While that is technically true, it is rare for a visa holder to lose their visa if the arrest was unwarranted. Moreover, a visa holder who is accused of a crime cannot leave the U.S. until their case is adjudicated. The issues in the Harvard case are complicated by the fact that anyone resident in the U.S., including undocumented immigrants (let alone students on a valid visa) is entitled to due process, but not to a visa.
As I wrote, the real problem is that much of the reporting of the administration’s demands confuses criminal offenses with simple violations of university policies — the university can address the later, if it choses to, but the details of criminal charges and the outcome of any prosecution should be matters for the appropriate authorities, not a university. In some cases, as you note, the appropriate authority may be the university police, but my guess is that more traffic tickets are written by the Cambridge or Somerville police than by the Harvard police!
Of course both the university and the U.S. Secretary of State have the authority to revoke a student visa. The point is that the wholesale revocation of all student visas at Harvard probably exceeds the authority of the Secretary, and denial of Harvard’s right to accept international students may be problematic. At least one federal judge has already suggested as much in his injunction.
I agree that the government has the ultimate authority to decide who gets a visa, but the courts have looked with skepticism in the past at broad policies that appear to be punitive and discriminatory rather than focused and rational. We’ll see!
Well done.
One comment about the humanities and academic freedom/free speech. “Life without humanities would be dull indeed,” as you say—and I would add social sciences as well—but what happens when a discipline in the humanities or social sciences is captured by ideological extremism? Do free speech and academic freedom entitle professors teaching in those disciplines to indoctrinate students in those ideologies no matter how extreme? The subject matter of science is tethered to empirical observations or theories that can be tested against empirical realities. How far off science can stray is limited by objective reality. Such is not the case for some of the humanities or social sciences.
I would love to learn how the humanities and social sciences establish and maintain guardrails that keep them from going bonkers.
Well, economics as a (social) science failed miserably to avoid going off the rails, particularly starting with the Chicago School’s IMO dire consequences in real world. Empirical testing was never the point; ideology was.
Edit: I should have said “in the real world”, and “failed dismally“.
In some places they do not seem to have guardrails. We all know of the crazy courses that occur, and we have reports of unwarranted indoctrination even here at Chicago.
From the mail I got from Heterodox Academy with the members of the panel:
Jerry Coyne
Professor Emertius
😂
Oy vey!!!! Fix it!
“And what is your opinion, Professor Emertius?”
“Naff off, Professor McGonagall, I’m retired.”
Jerry will your panel discussion include compelled speech (a natural complement to restrictions on freedom of speech)?
My university doesn’t require me as part of my job to declare support for antiracism, decolonization, indigenization, trans rights, or other social justice issues. But the grant agencies do. And I am required to (try to) get grant money as part of my job. I’m struggling to write a research grant proposal because the grant agency requires me to aver things that I don’t believe in (about how equity and inclusion lead to diversity and thus to better research). This feels like compelled speech and a loss of academic freedom.
https://imgflip.com/i/9uo3ie
In situations where I’m overtly powerless, plausibly-deniable passive aggression can be a useful tool. YMMV.
Could you possibly elaborate on this please? There seems to be a contradiction. A search limited by my lack of full understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence doesn’t turn up any findings by the Supreme Court of the United States that academic freedom is a 1A right at private universities. This 2023 guidance from the American Association of University Professors seems to say that a professor who believes his private university employer abridged his academic freedom would have recourse through employment and contract law but could not get the Courts to over-rule the employer’s restriction on First Amendment grounds.
https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Academic%20Freedom%20Outline%20for%20Website.pdf
Now if it was the Government that was doing the abridging, say by revoking a foreign visiting professor’s employment visa because, allegedly, of what he wanted to enquire into, then I can see 1A operating. That’s why I’d be interested to know of any cases where the Supreme Court did rule on academic freedom as a 1A question at a private university.