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AAUP Watch
Last week ACTA sent a strongly worded letter to Richard Blum, chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of California. In it, ACTA expressed concern about reports that UC Irvine chancellor Michael Drake had rescinded an offer to Dr. Erwin Chemerinsky because of inappropriate political considerations; the letter urged the Regents "to undertake a systematic review of the integrity of the academic hiring process and the state of intellectual diversity at UC." A subsequent press release summarized ACTA's stance on the Chemerinsky case.
So there really should not be any doubt about where ACTA stands on the issue, particularly since its position is consistent with ACTA's historic, repeated emphasis on the importance of keeping politics out of academic personnel decisions. The Chronicle of Higher Education was not confused on this point: In an article on the Chemerinsky debacle, Katherine Mangan links to ACTA's letter to Blum and quotes from it: "Universities must encourage and foster opposing viewpoints. When--as here--administrative actions suggest that the university is averse to the robust exchange of ideas, corrective action is in order."
And yet, some commentators appear to remain befuddled about the facts, even going so far as to suggest that ACTA is partially responsible for UC's gross dereliction of fair procedure. At Common Dreams, law professor Marjorie Cohn declares that the Chemerinsky scandal "is the latest chapter in the post September 11 attack on academic freedom under the guise of protecting security"; she then fingers ACTA as a leader in this alleged "attack"--even though ACTA has always scrupulously defended the academic freedom and free speech rights of the professoriate. (Readers will recall, for example, that when many were calling for University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill to be fired for his comments on 9/11, ACTA was one of the few who stepped forward and loudly defended Churchill's expressive and due process rights.) Cohn then unconscionably omits the crucial fact that ACTA is among the "hundreds" who protested Drake's decision and presumably helped convince UC to renew its offer to Chemerinsky today. Cohn also conveniently ignores the fact that her concern--that "Drake's action sends a clear message to academics that they must avoid speaking out or writing about controversial issues" and thus "is a threat to academic freedom"--echoes ACTA's own.
But it would be unfair to focus exclusively on Cohn--who is a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild--for incorrectly reporting ACTA's position on academic freedom and procedural impartiality. After all, she is only following the lead of the AAUP itself.
Just this past weekend, AAUP president Cary Nelson spent time criticizing ACTA, as he has been wont to do, because ACTA happens to disagree with the AAUP's current articulation of academic freedom: "They constantly attack professors exercising what (the American Association of University Professors) regards as their academic rights." But Nelson's comment only reveals his own confusion about the AAUP's definitions and statements --on which ACTA's defense of academic freedom is based. As ACTA has consistently noted, the AAUP's original conception of academic freedom was not one of simple faculty rights, as Nelson would have it, but a system of correlative rights and responsibilities. Indeed, Nelson distorts the facts when he casts ACTA's commentary on the academy as an attack on professors' "academic rights"; professors do not have the right not to be criticized, and it is inflammatory, to say the least, to describe legitimate expression as an "attack."
But Nelson is simply repeating older AAUP canards--as at least one blogger, Stephen Butler, notes. Butler, to his great credit, recognizes the overblown and misleading rhetoric of the AAUP for what it is. Looking into matters himself, Butler found in ACTA an organization that articulates perfectly reasonable positions on political correctness in the academy, with special emphasis on the curriculum.
"Nelson and his group are overreacting to the goals of ACTA," he writes. "What is it, exactly, that [is] so damn dangerous about a core curriculum? I get the feeling that many in academia have come to believe that the only liberal education is a Liberal education." Noting that later this month Neal will be speaking at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign--where, it's worth noting, Nelson teaches English--Butler concludes on an encouraging note: "I hope Anne Neal and her group make some serious waves here at the University of Illinois."
Neal, of course, will do at Illinois what she always does: She will comment in a reasoned, measured manner on higher education. And odds are that this will, indeed, make waves.
Posted by acta online on September 17, 2007 at September 17, 2007 10:12 PM
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