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.

That is the question that dominated the Society for Personality and Social Psychology at its annual conference, according to a fascinating article in today’s New York Times (also referenced by Inside Higher Ed).  But rather than looking at the usual litany of victims and rounding up the usual suspects, Dr. Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia argues that social psychologists discriminate against conservatives.  After polling the audience, over 80% of which self-identified as liberal, he commented: 

Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation. . . .  But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.

And this leftist echo chamber has consequences on campus, especially for conservative students, who hide their political beliefs from colleagues who openly assume that everyone—or at least everyone who is considered “intelligent”—is liberal. 

Dr. Haidt’s diagnosis confirms what other studies—some of which the New York Times references—have shown:  that leftists and Democrats vastly outnumber conservatives and Republicans among university faculty.  And it confirms what professors like Dr. Mike Adams and students like Julea Ward have experienced:  if you merely express conservative or Christian views, you will face discrimination, in the form of lost promotions or even expulsion.  

But Dr. Haidt does not just diagnose the problem.  He also explains how it arose:  “social psychologists are a ‘tribal-moral community’ united by ‘sacred values’ that hinder research and damage their credibility—and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.”  And to break up this ideological monopoly, he prescribes some good medicine:  hefty portions of National Review and Thomas Sowell.  Hopefully, his message will catch on and the discrimination against conservatives and Christians in higher education will end.  Until then, perhaps we should call his prescription Chicken Soup for the Leftist Soul.

At the beginning of a new year, there is a valuable opportunity for reflection on the past year and what it means for the future.  While 2010 was certainly not without its major victories for free speech, it also suffered some challenges.    Here’s a quick look back at developments in ADF’s academic freedom cases in 2010 and what they mean for 2011:

Badger Catholic v. Walsh, et al. (University of Wisconsin):

Part of the ongoing battle against the University of Wisconsin for its discriminatory student fee program, Badger Catholic presents a challenge to the denial of student fee funding to a Catholic student group because its activities may involve student-led prayer, worship or proselytizing in violation of Rosenberger’s requirement of viewpoint neutrality.  In September, the Seventh Circuit handed down its opinion, reaffirming that the Establishment Clause does not require such discrimination against religious student speech.  The court ruled that the University must treat religious student groups equally to nonreligious student groups, in terms of granting them funding for their expression and allowing them space to meet on campus.

Badger Catholic was a huge win, but the battle isn’t over yet.  Attorneys for the University of Wisconsin filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court in November. 

Sheldon v. Dhillon (San Jose-Evergreen Community College District):

 June Sheldon was an adjunct professor at San Jose City College. While teaching her class on human heredity, a student asked whether homosexuality was genetic or environmentally influenced.  Ms. Sheldon responded that the issue was complex and referred the student to materials mentioned in the textbook, but one student was offended by her response and complained anonymously.  The college district responded by firing Ms. Sheldon.  At the end of 2009, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California refused to dismiss Ms. Sheldon’s First Amendment claims, holding that an instructor’s speech in the classroom is protected by the First Amendment, and in June 2010, a settlement was finalized with the District.  As a result of the settlement, the District agreed to fully expunge any allegations of wrongdoing from Ms. Sheldon’s employment record and pay her $100,000 in damages.  The Sheldon case represents a huge victory for faculty free speech, and its precedent can be used in the future to help protect professors’ rights.

Professor Kenneth Howell (University of Illinois):

Dr. Kenneth Howell, a well-respected and well-liked professor at the University of Illinois, was fired in July after teaching the Roman Catholic Church’s position on homosexual behavior in a class called Introduction to Catholicism, after a student (who was not even enrolled in the class!) complained.  But after a few letters from ADF, and facing a groundswell of support by students and media scrutiny, the University reinstated Dr. Howell.  Moreover, a few months later, a faculty committee issued a report on the situation and agreed that Dr. Howell was entitled to due process, that professors of religious studies may have a perspective in teaching their courses, just like any other professor, and that students don’t have a right to not to be offended.  While the Howell situation did not involve a court ruling, the University’s corrective actions should serve as an example to other universities in the future when they are given the opportunity to protect the free speech rights of faculty members.  The Howell situation should also serve as an encouragement to students to stand up for what’s right—the students who started the grassroots effort to get Dr. Howell reinstated played an integral role in this victory.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Despite the Third Circuit’s 2008 ruling in DeJohn v. Temple University, many public universities under that Court’s jurisdiction continued to retain unconstitutional speech policies which allowed a student to be punished for saying something that simply offended another student.  In an effort to bring these policies into compliance with DeJohn, ADF allied attorneys sent letters to several universities, notifying them that their policies ran afoul of the Constitution and offering assistance in changing those policies.  As a result of a letter sent by ADF allied attorneys Leonard Brown and Randall Wenger, IUP agreed to change their unconstitutional speech code.   Hopefully more universities follow their lead in 2011 and voluntarily give up their unconstitutional policies.

Despite these victories, 2010 also presented some challenges:

In CLS v. Martinez, the Supreme Court ruled that University of California Hastings College of Law could have an all-comers policy without violating the First Amendment, even though, as the justices rightly pointed out, it made little sense.  (Extensive analysis of the Court’s decision can be found here, here, here, and here, for a start.)  Importantly, however, the Court remanded the case to the district court to determine whether there was discriminatory enforcement of the policy—in other words, whether CLS was targeted for unequal treatment under the policy.  Given the evidence in the record regarding the other student groups that required their members and leaders to hold views in common with the purpose of the group, we are hopeful that CLS will get justice in the end.  And because the ruling was quite narrow (virtually no other schools have an all-comers policy, probably because they are silly and stifle the marketplace of ideas), it had a lesser impact on free speech and associational rights than anticipated.  In the words of Michael McConnell, we have lived to fight another day. 

In Lopez v. Candaele (Los Angeles Community College District) and Rock For Life v. Hrabowski (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), the Ninth and Fourth Circuits, respectively, went the opposite way of the Third and Sixth Circuits in holding that students lack standing to facially challenge policies that restrict their speech.   OSU Students Alliance v. Ray (Oregon State University) is currently awaiting an oral argument date at the Ninth Circuit after a district court judge dismissed the students’ complaint.  While these rulings were certainly disappointing, ADF was able to obtain positive policy changes in all three of these cases.  Adams, Ward and Keeton are also at the appellate level following disappointing district court rulings.  All of these cases are still ongoing, and will be ones to watch for developments in 2011. 

Finally, the Supreme Court heard Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, a case that has implications for associational rights in the educational context.  The opinion in this case is expected in Spring 2011, probably late March or April. 

Given what’s at stake, 2011 promises to be an incredibly crucial year for student and faculty free speech in the courts.

We have frequently written about how academia is far to the left ideologically of the rest of the country and the impact that this has on students.   Still the skeptics remain, but now we have confirmation from that bastion of religious right-wing thought, the veritable Bob Jones University of California:  the University of California-Berkeley.  As highlighted over at Tax Prof Blog (and previewed there back in July), two UC-Berkeley law students recently published a study showing that “law schools overwhelmingly hire liberals as law professors.”  Featured in The National Jurist, the study shows that over 85% of new hires from 2006 through 2009 were liberals.  Even the authors note that this “doesn’t speak well of the intellectual diversity of American law school hiring.” 

Indeed, how can law schools function as the “marketplace of ideas” when one entire side of ideological spectrum is almost entirely absent?  In 1967, the Supreme Court wrote eloquently in its Keyishian opinion about how “our Nation’s future depends on leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues, rather than through any kind of authoritative selection.”  It is too bad that our law schools—the institutions that play a unique role in shaping future leaders—do not share the Supreme Court’s vision.