Peter Wood has an interesting article today in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing the AAUP’s efforts to encourage faculty advocacy in the classroom.  He writes:

In a series of recent reports beginning in 2007 with Freedom in the Classroom, the AAUP has staked out a position that aggressively expands the zone in which faculty members should be free to enunciate their personal opinions to their students. The AAUP has, in effect, found no appropriate limit on what professors should say or how they say it, other than to draw the line at “dishonest tactics” and outright attempts to “deceive students.”

Faculty members teaching a course on botany are, in the AAUP’s reckoning, free to digress on the perfidy of political leaders; faculty members teaching American literature are free to delve at whatever length they choose into issues of economics, social justice, or the environment. The freedom of faculty members, in this view, extends to “rhetorical intensity.” So faculty members are free to bully, humiliate, and rant—although the report genteelly avoids putting in plain language the various forms of intemperate expression its authors would countenance.

The AAUP is pushing for greater academic freedom in the classroom, according to Mr. Wood, because “any attempt to draw the line between permissible and impermissible forms of advocacy might well be seized as a pretext by those who are eager to silence certain views.” 

Yet in ADF’s experience, those “who are eager to silence certain views” are fellow faculty members and administrators.  Consider the case of June Sheldon, for example.  She was hired to teach a human heredity class.  When a student asked her about the relationship between heredity and homosexual behavior, she answered by referring the student to the textbook’s answer–that the question is being debated in the scientific community.  She then added some thoughts of her own based on her research.  Another student later reported that she was “offended” by Ms. Sheldon’s comments.  Did the college protect Ms. Sheldon?  Did it cite her academic freedom to add her own expertise to the classroom?  No.  It fired her. 

Or consider the case of Professor Mike Adams.  The University of North Carolina – Wilmington refused to promote him to full professor because he was a Christian and had written political commentary outside the classroom.  Indeed, those responsible for his promotion were his peers in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.  They did not support his academic freedom, they trampled it.  (In the AAUP’s defense, it submitted an excellent amicus brief to a federal appeals court, supporting Professor Adams’ case of discrimination.) 

Mr. Wood blames the AAUP’s problem on the widespread bias in the academy.  A bias not necessarily of political nature, but of societal nature.  According to him:

The academic left has so far succeeded in its own domination of the means of intellectual production that most students never catch a glimpse of the alternatives. The exception may be in economics courses, where even liberal professors tend to take a positive view of free markets, but this exception does little to modify the overall proposition: Our universities teach from a standpoint of opposition to the society they are part of.

The AAUP explicitly regards this as a good thing, and it further regards “academic freedom” as the doctrine our society needs in order to keep “vested interests,” the “tyranny of public opinion,” and other threats of “interference” at bay (see pages four and five of the new report). We need academic freedom, in this view, to foster the progressive “long term” thinking and criticism that can flower in an academy that sets itself against the short-term calculations that are likely to prevail in the political and social world outside.

Perhaps the real reason we need robust academic freedom is not to protect American society from itself, as the AAUP believes, but to protect the “unpopular” or “politically incorrect” faculty from an academy in ideological lockstep.

Back in March of 2010, a federal district court judge in North Carolina ruled that Professor Mike Adams’ columns at Townhall.com were not protected by the First Amendment.  Dr. Adams appealed that decision, gathering support from academic organizations from across the ideological spectrum.  Last week, this effort was blessed with a strong, ringing defense of academic freedom from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  And so a year after the district court’s opinion, Dr. Adams fittingly announces at Townhall.com today:  “Caution:  This Column Now Protected by the First Amendment.” 

Some told us we should just give up.  Others told us we should simply accept the federal judge’s decision and resign ourselves to the fact that the First Amendment is now dead on our college campuses.  But the Alliance Defense Fund took my case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in January.  And, last week, they issued a landmark defense of First Amendment rights for faculty at public colleges and universities.  For the first time in years, I’m getting love mail from liberals.

And after explaining the Fourth Circuit’s decision in a very easy to understand way (which is well worth reading in its entirety), he puts the entire case in perspective: 

This all means that soon my lawyers with the ADF will go back to court to argue for a trial on the facts of my First Amendment retaliation claim. But thousands of professors in the Fourth Circuit – most of whom do not share my views – have already won a major victory. Their free speech rights once again belong to them as individuals – and not to the state that employs them.

You’re welcome.

A University of North Carolina–Wilmington professor’s speeches and columns are fully protected by the First Amendment, according to a published decision handed down Wednesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Alliance Defense Fund attorneys contended that criminology professor Mike Adams was denied a promotion unconstitutionally because university officials were hostile to the religious and political views he espoused in his columns and speeches.

A lower court had said that Adams’ speeches and columns on matters of public concern were not protected by the First Amendment and instead constituted “official” speech as part of his job duties.  The 4th Circuit disagreed, finding that Adams’ columns and speeches constituted protected, private speech and that university officials could be held personally liable for damages should Adams ultimately prevail in the case.

“Christian professors should not be discriminated against because of their beliefs, and this decision thoroughly upholds that,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French, who argued before the court in January.  “The 4th Circuit’s decision is a ringing vindication of the academic freedom of public university professors.  Disagreeing with an accomplished professor’s religious and political views is no grounds for refusing him promotion.  Opinion columns are among the purest examples of free speech protected by the First Amendment.”

In its opinion in Adams v. The Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the 4th Circuit wrote that “no individual loses his ability to speak as a private citizen by virtue of public employment. . . .  Adams’ columns addressed topics such as academic freedom, civil rights, campus culture, sex, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, religion, and morality.  Such topics plainly touched on issues of public, rather than private, concern. . . .  The Defendants’ arguments to the contrary rest on the same fallacy engaged by the district court, and focus not on the nature of Adams’ speech at the time it was made, but on his inclusion of those materials in the ‘private’ context of his promotion application.  Nothing in the district court’s analysis or the Defendants’ contentions rebut the conclusion that Adams’ speech was that of ‘a citizen speaking on a matter of public concern.’”

A former atheist, Adams frequently received accolades from his colleagues after the university hired him as an assistant professor in 1993 and promoted him to associate professor in 1998. However, after his conversion to Christianity in 2000, Adams was subjected to a campaign of academic persecution that culminated in his denial of promotion to full professor, despite an award-winning record of teaching, research, and service.

The case now goes back to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina for further proceedings consistent with the 4th Circuit’s conclusions on Adams’ viewpoint discrimination and retaliation claims.

Over at The Clarion Call, Dr. Donald Downs highlights the importance of Dr. Mike Adams’ lawsuit against the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.  We have frequently discussed how Dr. Adams was cruising for promotion until he became a conservative Christian and—worse yet—a vocal one.  Dr. Downs thoroughly explains what led to the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the case the district court used to say that Dr. Adams’ columns were not protected by the First Amendment.  And he outlines how this decision—and lower court rulings relying on it—not only chills free speech but also “threatens to stifle or inhibit open criticism of higher education institutions by those who are in the best position to know what is going on inside them.”  But seeing as “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” as Justice Brandeis noted, such rulings do not bode well for the long term health of universities or the students they serve.  And Dr. Downs highlights this point in an article well worth reading in its entirety.

I recently attended a faculty conference where any mention of the word “tenure” was met with a cynical chuckle and someone saying, “Tenure, ha!  It barely exists anymore!”  As one who sits off-campus looking in on the Academy the sentiment jolted me.  After all, tenure and the Academy go together like bread and butter.  But an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education demonstrates that my conference friends were not too radical in their retort.  In fact, the Chronicle reports that tenure may in fact be dead—or is at least dying.  And while this news troubles those looking for job security, it has also raised questions about whether professors are free to say what they want inside and outside the classroom.

The Chronicle reports the collegiate trend against tenure:

Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

“What’s so bad about the loss of tenure?” you ask.  “All it means is that professors are now employed at-will like the rest of us.”  But here is what worries the faculty:

For starters, some observers say that college faculties are being filled with people who may be less willing to speak their minds: contingent instructors, usually working on short-term contracts. Indeed, the American Association of University Professors says instructors need tenure to guarantee that they can say controversial things inside and outside the classroom without being fired.

This is cause for concern.  While tenure can entrench some wacky professors (thinking of the engineering professor at my alma mater who was an outspoken Holocaust denier), it also protects the lion’s share of professors who want to conduct cutting edge research and propose new theories without fear of government or institutional censorship.  Without tenure, professors will feel less free.  So where can they turn after tenure dies?

They can start with the First Amendment.  For years the Supreme Court lauded the important role the Academy plays in modern society.  In Keyishian v. Board of Regents, the Court said:

The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident.  No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth.  To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. . . . Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust.  Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.

The Court was onto something here.  The lifeblood of our national intellectual stamina is the training of our children and young adults through rigorous study and debate.  Though this blog has amply criticized the many faults of the modern public university, we recognize that the university is still a center of training and new discovery.  Thus, only a few years ago in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its understanding of the Academy by specifically exempting it from a devastating decision that removed the ability of public employees to speak freely.  With that the Court renewed its commitment to protect free thought in higher education.

Yet some courts are attempting to erode those protections.  As my colleague, Travis Barham, wrote recently, “a federal district court in North Carolina ruled that Dr. Mike Adams’ nationally syndicated columns were not protected by the First Amendment.”  The court based its decision, in part, on deference to the university’s administration and decision making process.  It seems that when faculty need the First Amendment most, courts are increasingly—and wrongly—deferential to college administrators.  The Supreme Court’s decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is just the latest example.

After tenure, where do faculty turn for the assurance that they can speak freely on campus?  For now, the First Amendment remains their friend.  But unless more professors like Dr. Adams stand up for their rights, after tenure, faculty may have nowhere to turn.