AFT Calls for Academic Freedom for ALL Faculty

Today, the first day of Campus Equity Week 2007, AFT releases Academic Freedom in the 21st-Century College and University: Academic Freedom for All Faculty and Instructional Staff (pdf).  A key focus of this new policy statement is the need for academic freedom  protections for all faculty, including those without traditional tenure protections.

The statement was developed over the past year with the involvement of AFT Higher Education's program and policy council. As with other policy and best practices statements of the division, this one was distributed and widely discussed at the annual higher education issues meeting, which took place in Portland, Ore., in March. Comments and suggestions were incorporated into the final document.

Recently, for AFT On Campus, I asked the statement's primary author, Art Hochner, to talk about the context for this statement, which is the first formal statement the AFT has released on academic freedom. Hochner is president of the Temple Association of University Professionals/AFT and an associate professor of human resource management in the business school at Temple University.

Read the full interview after the jump.

AFT On Campus: When we hear of academic freedom statements in higher education, we think of the American Association of University Professors' 1940 statement, which has been the academic's bible for years. Why has the AFT released its own statement now, and what is the "deep sense of urgency" that guides its policy recommendations?

Art Hochner: The changed circumstances of colleges and universities of the early 21st century impelled the AFT to both embrace and broaden the 1940 statement. Today, most faculty have no tenure and no access to it. Tenure is the essential bulwark of academic freedom in the AAUP statement. But nontenure-track full-time faculty and part-time/adjunct faculty have become a majority of the professoriate. All faculty need academic freedom and need to have the protections that allow it to flourish.

AOC: The new statement alludes to current restrictions on the ability of faculty to be self-regulating experts and professionals. What trends and practices are limiting faculty?

AH: Let's start with the academic staffing crisis. The model of a modern university presumes a faculty built around the tenure track. Such faculty are the experts on how to develop, organize and present knowledge to students and the world-at-large. Through group peer review, they evaluate who will become faculty members, what courses are in the curriculum, how students qualify for degrees and even have input into important institutional policy decisions. That's the ideal, but the actual modern university is increasingly built around hiring masses of financially insecure, contingent faculty. It's a corporate model of employment built around managerial decision-making. Contingent faculty-those without access to tenure-typically are hired and managed without peer review and have no say in governance.

AOC: ... and they are excluded from the protection of academic freedom?

AH: That's right. Academic freedom is vital for the functioning of all higher education institutions. It's not the privilege of a few. If some faculty don't have it, the academic freedom of all of us is diminished. It's our obligation as academic unionists to stand up for basic principles. One of those principles is the integrity of the college and university. An equally important one is solidarity with all faculty and staff.

AOC: Where do you think the conservative attacks on faculty as a group of liberals are coming from?

AH: Some critics-generally a small number of self-appointed guardians of intellectual tradition- do not like the changes that have taken place in the student body, curriculum and composition of the faculty over the past few decades. They're unhappy with open enrollment and affirmative action. They don't like the expansion of the conventional canon of Western thought and literature to include new voices and perspectives. And they perceive overwhelming support for liberal thinking on campuses. However, there's also a more sinister aspect to many conservative attacks. A few well-funded ideologues have been using the controversial comments of some faculty to claim that colleges are bastions of left-wing orthodoxy, and to undermine the public's respect for professors and academic institutions. They aim to diminish government's willingness to fulfill its funding obligations. It's part of the trend to privatize all public benefits, like railroads, highways and Social Security.

AOC: How important is the academic labor movement to the future of academic freedom?

AH: It used to be that faculty and staff in higher education could rely on an informal social contract to respect the voice and independence of the faculty. This was expressed in institutional arrangements, such as the tenure and promotion process and faculty senates. Now this system is breaking down, with more centralized, corporate-style management at colleges and universities. To secure our academic freedom, we have to secure our proper place in decision-making at the institutional, state and national levels. We need organizations that span institutions, that can provide resources, and that can use all the tools at hand, including political involvement. To attain true academic freedom-that is, the freedom to teach, research and be active members of society, without fear of retaliation-labor organizations are indispensable.

AOC: The statement calls for full intellectual property rights governing teaching materials. Have legal measures governing intellectual property rights kept up with the rapid developments in technology and distance learning practices?

AH: In a word, no. The law tends to give all the rights to the employer, unless there's a specific agreement in place for distributing those rights differently. Faculty have to organize to influence institutional policies. Negotiating a collective bargaining agreement covering these subjects is an effective measure. But we need to organize politically to push for reform of national legislation too. The AFT has issued a statement on this, "Intellectual Property Issues for Higher Education Unions: A Primer" (available at www.aft.org/higher_ed).

AOC: You use a compelling metaphor in the statement: Academic freedom as a tree having its roots eroded by loss of tenure and governance, and therefore, as more vulnerable to toppling by gusts of external meddling. But it's hard to bring sunlight to the situation when the public may not appreciate what the loss of academic freedom represents, especially when families think the gravest problem in higher ed is rising costs. How can faculty engage the public more effectively on what is happening? How do you make it personal?

AH: We need to bring to light what happens when the teachers and mentors of students are deprived of academic freedom. That is, what happens to the character and quality of the education that students receive-at all levels-when their teachers are afraid to try out new ideas, to use different methods, to speak up against bad decisions. Students deserve the best we can give them. We can only give them our best when we have true academic freedom. That may involve controversial political ideas, but really it involves all independent thinking.

AOC: The statement ends with a utopian ideal: "The overriding hallmark of academic freedom, and of quality in higher education, lies in the practices that ensure educational decisions are made by educators for educational reasons-not political or commercial or management reasons." How do we ensure that happens?

AH: Rather than utopian, I would say this ideal is integral to the mission of higher education, which is the creation, preservation and transmission of knowledge. The challenge is how to institutionalize academic freedom-to turn it from the statement of an ideal into a concrete and enforceable practice. We can do that in many ways: college or university rules and regulations, collectively bargained agreements, and legislation, for instance. Academic freedom has to be backstopped by real job protections-by tenure, by reappointment procedures with appeals procedures, and by other mechanisms of due process. The AFT has a wealth of people with ideas and experience who can craft practical solutions. I'm confident that with a lot of hard work we can indeed ensure that academic freedom for all faculty becomes a reality.

AOC: Thank you, Art.

AH: It's been a pleasure.