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Academic freedom and the ACLU
Today, after an investigation lasting more than two years, the University of Colorado Board of Regents is meeting to decide whether to fire ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill. Churchill's notoriety stems from an article he wrote comparing the victims of the 9/11 attacks to Nazis; when the public learned of this article in early 2005, many called for Churchill to be fired for his speech. ACTA defended Churchill's free speech and academic freedom, and urged CU to provide Churchill with due process. CU listened, and when allegations of research misconduct on Churchill's part surfaced--not for the first time--CU launched an investigation. After a lengthy, scrupulous process, the University determined that Churchill had indeed "committed several forms of academic misconduct"; this spring, CU's Privilege and Tenure committee concluded that Churchill had "committed multiple acts of plagiarism, fabrication and falsification" and that the case requires "severe sanctions." CU president Hank Brown followed up with a letter to the Board of Regents recommending that Churchill be fired.
The Churchill case should be a no-brainer, a straightforward instance of a university terminating a faculty member who has engaged in multiple, documented acts of scholarly malfeasance. But not everyone agrees. The ACLU, for example, has come out in Churchill's defense, arguing that to fire him would be to violate his academic freedom and his First Amendment rights. But in so arguing, the ACLU only proves a point ACTA president Anne Neal made at InsideHigherEd.com last month:
The arguments of Churchill and his misguided defenders do--regrettably--arise from a basic conviction that academics should be free from accountability. They involve manipulating the term "academic freedom" in ways that undermine a concept of foundational importance to the academic enterprise. They amount to an attempt to turn the concept inside out--morphing what was originally a cluster of interlocking privileges and responsibilities centered on the public good into a justification for the false idea that academics have no obligation to the public at all.
The ACLU's stance on the Churchill case represents a palpable danger to the very concept the ACLU is purporting to defend: academic freedom. Colorado's treatment of the Churchill case is very far from an attack on academic freedom; indeed, if anyone is attacking the concept of academic freedom, it is those who are using the Churchill case to to promote the dangerous and anti-intellectual notion that accountability is somehow anathema to free inquiry, and that in academe, anything goes.
"Ward Churchill is a poster boy for academic malfeasance, not academic freedom," said Neal in a press release issued today. "While claiming to protect academic freedom, the ACLU is making a mockery of it."
Here's to Colorado's Board standing firm on principle. It's up to governing boards to defend the honor of a concept that is at once foundational to the academic enterprise, and, as we have seen, terribly fragile and open to abuse.
Posted by acta online at July 24, 2007 05:40 PM
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Comments
VALUABLE FREE ADVICE
Ms. Neal: Mr. Churchill was merely the tip of the iceberg. One major political party bows to its union masters, the other frozen by fear of being accused of being "mean."
What is needed: back to basics.
Heavy academic workloads. Discipline. Work-study instead of grants. High, strict academic standards. Honor codes, with authentic penalties for violators.
NO SPORTS, CLIMBING WALLS, or big-screens locked on ESPN. Internet ONLY to news and academic sites. NO TENURE -- only multi-year contracts. Cut middle-management. Out-source non-academic activities (e.g., room and board, financial aid).
That ought to cut costs by 20% -- no need to raise taxes. And the students would be more employable and test higher. But no one wants to be "mean."
God help the USA.
Posted by: Homer at July 25, 2007 06:31 PM
It is clear that the ACLU has no leg to stand on and that Ms. Neal is correct in saying that the Churchill affair does not represent an infringement on academic freedom.
But I wonder why the focus is on the duties Churchill and his university owed to the public, which ACTA categorizes (not elaborating at all) under the term "accountability." The only duty that matters in the free-speech side of this controversy is the Constitutional duty of the State of Colorado to refrain from restricting Churchill's expression, a duty that it appears to have complied with.
Vague and unfounded notions of "accountability" that derive from nothing more than one's status as a professor or trustee -- not from the law -- are just as intellectually weak as the fuzzy ideas about fuzzy duties that the ACLU seems to be putting forth in this case, the idea that firing an unqualified and incompetent employee somehow violates the First Amendment.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 27, 2007 05:52 PM