Forum on Academic Freedom

Current State of Academic Freedom

Gil Troy

Imagine historians in 2055 researching the state of academic freedom in 2005. They discover that a “Committee on Academic Freedom” identified “five major areas of concern”: government surveillance, government harassing foreigners, government restricting archival access, government “shap[ing] the content of teaching and research” and harassment of teachers by conservatives, notably repressing “antiwar” voices and imposing celebrations of Ronald Reagan. Wouldn’t you suspect this litany was one-sided? Wouldn’t you think that notions of accuracy and integrity aside, good strategy would entail noting at least one example of leftist intolerance to create the pretense of balance?

The OAH Committee on Academic Freedom’s myopic mandate undermined its credibility. You need not be a pajama-wearing, fire-breathing, Bush-loving blogger to protest the chilling effects of leftist politicking--and bullying--on academic  freedom, along with government excesses and conservative histrionics. Many students see it. I cringe when students confess they won’t disagree with a professor--or question a politically-motivated distortion--because they fear retribution. I shudder when even University of Michigan Democrats admit there is no “safe space” for George Bush supporters on campus. I mourn when Columbia University students challenge  professorial bullying  and their complaints  are  reduced  to  a  pro- or anti-Israel Rorschach test rather than issues
of educational morality. And I am outraged by the silence of fellow moderates, who shrug their shoulders and shut their mouths fearing being tagged as “right wing maniacs,” academic shorthand for being stupid AND evil. Selective indignation, piling up one-sided lists of sins deemed left-wing or right-wing is the problem, not the solution. Academic freedom too frequently is a truncheon swung selectively. Diversity is a false ideal if it only guarantees a rainbow of colors. True education demands that students confront a dizzying spectrum of positions, learning to evaluate them systematically. Studying history should cultivate critical thought, depth, and perspective, not sloganeering or aping the latest academic trends. Whatever happened to “a free marketplace of ideas” and “freedom for the thoughts we hate”? When did our desire to be political missionaries upstage our mission as educators? We need to be vigilant and consistent, attacking abuses regardless of the perpetrators’ politics. Violence to silence speakers, professorial pressure for students to embrace political positions, collegial censure of mavericks, must end, whether the speakers, students, or professors are liberals or conservatives. Alas, our campuses have become increasingly polarized, too many academics consort only with ideological and methodological allies, mocking the ideals of open-mindedness and learning from everyone. Politics does not taint everything in today’s academy. In seeking to restore balance to the classroom, the discussion itself must remain balanced. Importing the media’s Crossfire dynamics onto campus generates headlines not progress. If the OAH committee wants to protect academic freedom, it will have to do what we train our students to do--dig beyond the headlines; address the egregious cases, then go further; resist the toxic, polarizing nature of modern political discourse; and ask probing questions about modern educational mores.

The committee will have to address the silence of moderates and iconoclasts who fear being labeled right wingers if they question campus orthodoxies. It will have to condemn the smothering of students who parrot back answers in too many classrooms, not daring to defy their teachers. It will have to challenge the boring, self-righteous, stultifying uniformity of opinion--or at least professed opinion--choking many departments. The distrust is so great that the committee should consider beginning with the unacademic approach of anonymous questionnaires, to encourage candor, and then, once a credible broader mandate is defined, invite public statements.

I am all for teaching as a subversive activity--but that includes questioning the prevailing political winds. Without freedom for students to sample a conceptual cornucopia, universities are useless. I know I risk collegial disdain by trying to keep politics out of my classroom. I don’t pretend to be bias-free. Rather, I encourage my students to identify biases including my own. There is value in refusing to use a professorial podium as a political platform, challenging students to talk politics without being political.

We must develop a culture of skepticism, not just about governmental authority and traditional shibboleths, but about contemporary predilections, modern “isms,” and cutting-edge methodologies. And we must restore a culture of tolerance, methodologically and substantively. We fail when students perceive us as doctrinaire, we distort when we only engage one side of an issue, we oversimplify when we reduce everything to a political equation, we cheat when we only hire intellectual clones, we betray ourselves when we befriend only those who agree with us.

“Ideas are explosive,” the Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson said in his 1957 Nobel Lecture. We need classrooms that are safe testing grounds for ideas, both new and old. We need campuses encouraging students and colleagues to experiment boldly, rigorously, honestly, creatively, systematically, and, as much as possible, apolitically. 

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author, most recently, of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton University Press).