In the November issue of the OAH Newsletter I presented the first report of the ad hoc Committee on Academic Freedom to the membership of the OAH. The committee consists of Raymond Arsenault, Sara Evans, Gloria Miranda, and myself, all of whom had been appointed the previous summer by President James O. Horton. Its report singled out five domains in which significant threats to the academic freedom of historians had been brought to our attention. The first was government surveillance of library use, of foreign-born students (especially community college students), and of campus meetings. The second was government exclusion or harassment of foreign scholars who either were faculty members in the United States or had been invited to come for some scholarly purpose. The third was restriction of researchers’ access to government documents. The fourth consisted of attempts by legislatures, state and local officials, and/or private organizations to shape the teaching or bring about the disciplining or dismissal of teachers with controversial views. As a related article by Lisa Norling and Sara Evans about Minnesota illustrated, such attempts have been concentrated especially on K-12 teachers, but they have also met with effective popular opposition. Consequently, the report singled out primary and secondary schools separately as the fifth area of concern.

The November report evoked considerable discussion and some serious criticisms. The committee and the editors of the OAH Newsletter decided, therefore, to solicit observations about the state of academic freedom today from scholars with a wide variety of interests and diverse points of view. The contributions assembled here, under the editorship of Phillip Guerty, have more than fulfilled our hopes. They have broadened the scope of the discussion significantly, introduced diverse and often conflicting perspectives on the sources of current threats to academic freedom in our profession, and provided useful information about ways in which different groups are responding to those threats.

Edward C. Papenfuse, working in close collaboration with the other members of the Committee on Research and Access to Historical Documentation and with Bruce Craig of the National Coalition for History, has provided a thorough and thoughtful analysis of current debates over the opening of public documents, collections in presidential archives, and the preservation of electronic records. He has also provided an assessment of the role of the new Archivist of the United States that is considerably more promising than was much of the discussion surrounding his appointment. Although the November report had singled out access to archives and documents as one of the major issues of concern, this contribution provides both several web references and insights that enrich our understanding of the issues involved.

In contrast to the emphasis that the November report placed on governmental repression, several of the contributions to this forum stress the repression of academic freedom that is exerted by school, college, and university administrations. At community colleges, direct administrative control of course content can sharply limit what faculty members can teach. In secondary schools, standards and tests imposed by state legislatures have confined or threatened to confine the teachers’ own creativity. Historians among them can find themselves unable to teach what they know best. Nevertheless, James McGrath Morris not only finds differences of opinion among teachers on these matters, but also issues a challenge to teachers to exert their own professional control over standards and assessments. Beito, Luker, and Johnson have drawn special attention to campus speech codes, which regulate and punish public expression of students’ views. One might add that the recent administrative responses to public controversies about their teachers have included strict, if ambiguous regulations concerning permissible speech by faculty at Columbia University and direct administration control of all student groups at Hamilton College . Moreover, as Jonathan Knight has added, more than one campus banned public speakers or art exhibits critical of the president during the 2004 campaign&emdash;a practice, alas, that goes back at least to the nineteenth century. I would argue that such regulations are by no means the exclusive concern of either “conservative” or “left-wing” groups.

Finally, Julie Greene’s comprehensive commentary on Colorado and Jonathan Knight’s concise survey of recent activities of the American Association of University Professors strongly reinforce the emphasis placed by the November report on the growing menace of efforts by officials of state governments to prohibit teaching of ideas those officials consider “outside the mainstream” of American thought, while slashing available funding for state universities, to the detriment of the humanities and social sciences especially. Knight rightly reminds us that there is nothing new about the need to defend the academic freedom of professors who “offend those in power.” In our own times, however, that historic necessity must be addressed within the larger context of efforts by powerful groups outside of the schools and universities to reconstruct the whole fabric of academic life. Drawing our attention to that broader context is a major accomplishment of this forum.