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AAUP Watch
The AAUP is known for defending professors who run afoul of institutional doctrine at religious colleges and universities; among the schools the AAUP has censured in recent years may be found a number of faith-based institutions that have fired faculty members for asking the wrong questions, having the wrong ideas, and teaching the wrong texts. Invariably, these faculty members' great failing is that they are thinking more liberally than their institutions want them to--hence the cases of Michael Hartwig at Albertus Magnus College, whose homosexuality eventually cost him his job; of Carmel McEnroy of St. Meinrad School of Technology, whose self-described "moderate feminism" cost her her job; of June Hagen of Nyack College, whose support for gay rights cost her her job; and of Gail Houston, the Brigham Young English professor whose feminism resulted in a denial of tenure.
The pattern of such cases is a predictable one; it is not surprising that faith-based institutions would find their faculty members occasionally falling afoul of institutional orthodoxy, nor is it surprising that typically, those who fall afoul of institutional orthodoxy do so by failing to adhere to some of their institutions' stricter norms. Private schools of this sort have every right to police their boundaries in this way; where they run into trouble is when they violate their own policies in the attempt to do so. The AAUP has established something of a cottage industry defending professors who get caught between their schools' doctrinal requirements and their stated commitment to academic freedom--which should not surprise us in the least. Such cases neatly align the principles of academic freedom and the broad liberalism of the AAUP itself, and as such are excellent advertisements for the organization.
To the AAUP's credit, it has recently taken up two very different sorts of cases. Greenville College has recently fired a professor for believing that the college is failing to live up to its orthodox mission. New Mexico Highlands University has recently fired two professors who argued that the University is favoring ethnicity over merit in personnel decisions. The AAUP has in each case defended professors whose views don't mesh readily with the AAUP's own political commitments--and yet the AAUP has in each case maintained an admirably content-neutral stance, defending principles of due process and academic freedom wherever they may lead.
Now there is a new dust-up at a Christian college where disputes about doctrine have clashed with the principles of academic freedom. Five of Patrick Henry College's sixteen fulltime faculty members are leaving after President Michael Farris began meddling with professors' classroom and public speech; one was fired after reading the college's statement on faith to his class and asking students who felt he failed to live up to it either to speak with him about it or to leave the class. Farris has consistently objected to professors' belief that the Bible is not the only source of truth, and that Christianity compels its adherents to seek the truth wherever that search may lead them.
The Patrick Henry case draws in much cleaner lines issues that arise in many of the AAUP cases centered on religious institutions; this is a school that aspires to be both a Christian institution and a liberal arts college, and the clash between the faculty and the president hinges absolutely on the question of whether, and how, these two missions can be coordinated with one another. And in this sense, Patrick Henry College may have a great deal to teach us about the uneasy tension between inquiry and belief that defines so many areas of American culture and that makes for such unpleasant doings not only in our religious schools, but also our secular ones.
Posted by acta online on May 16, 2006 at May 16, 2006 08:17 AM
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