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Not such a fine plan
In his latest bestseller, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, executive leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith outlines the twenty bad habits that keep successful people from becoming even more successful. They include turning every interaction into a competition that they must win, not listening, being negative, and making destructive comments. Goldsmith also offers a failsafe method for breaking bad habits that are so ingrained we have trouble catching ourselves committing them: Hire a friend to monitor you and bill you $10 every time you fall off the behavioral wagon.
The Arizona state senate seems to have had a similar inspiration when it comes to faculty behaving badly. Last Thursday a senate committee approved a bill that would prohibit professors at public colleges and universities from doing the following while on the job:
--Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.--Endorsing, supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.
--Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.
--Advocating "one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy."
--Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.
If the bill passes, the Arizona Board of Regents would have to find a way to implement the law and would also have to establish mandatory annual training for faculty members covering what they can and cannot say. Professors found guilty of violating the requirements would be liable for up to $500 in fines--and would have to pay that out of their own pockets.
The differences between Goldsmith's plan and the Arizona senate's are as important as the similarities, however -- while the one is a self-help plan, adopted voluntarily to cure a personal flaw, the other is a punitive measure imposed by lawmakers to control the speech of public employees. In the first, an individual anxious to improve his relationship with his colleagues devises a speech code for himself and enlists others in enforcing it; in the second, faculty members who are protected by the First Amendment are subjected to a censorious ban that not only violates the principles of academic freedom but also arguably violates their constitutional rights.
ACTA has long argued that colleges and universities need to work harder to ensure that faculty members don't push their politics and beliefs on students in lieu of teaching them. But ACTA has also long argued that colleges and universities must do this is a manner that honors academic freedom and that avoids legislative intervention of the sort envisioned in Arizona.
InsideHigherEd.com has the details about the bill, as well as plenty of comments from readers who see just how overbroad and problematic the bill's language is. And at Phi Beta Cons, David French performs a thought experiment, exploring the possibility that the proposed bill just may be consistent with both the First Amendment and academic freedom as it has been framed by the AAUP. French still thinks the bill is a very bad idea -- but his thinking on the question of whether it is a potentially viable idea is well worth a look. His bottom line is that universities' failure to take their own obligations to teach rather than preach seriously may finally compel legislators to take academic freedom into their own hands:
For many years, university professors have enjoyed a measure of academic freedom that is actually greater in scope than the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Persistent and arrogant abuse of that freedom is going to invariably lead legislatures and universities themselves to begin to roll back professors' expressive autonomy. Sadly, the university establishment seems oblivious to the fact that their own abuses are leading them down the road of regulation, and they seem blissfully unaware that their employers have far more power over their expression than they dare to think.
ACTA has been delivering a similar message for some time. It's a sign of the arrogance French cites that the academic establishment has met such warnings by attacking the messenger rather than addressing the problem. Perhaps the Arizona sitation will be a wakeup call?
Posted by acta online at February 20, 2007 10:00 AM
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