Inside Higher Ed: Redefining Academic Freedom
The modern concept of academic freedom is built around the idea – from 19th century German universities — of Lehrfreiheit — or freedom to teach. Broadly defined, it was intended to protect the right of professors, in their teaching and research, to follow their ideas wherever they led them. In the United States, this idea led to the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915, and the organization’s statement on principles of academic freedom, which was designed to protect professors from political firings and to assure their meaningful role in the governance of colleges.
The American Federation of Teachers, which represents about 160,000 faculty members, academic employees and graduate students in the United States, wants to restate the values of academic freedom — and to make them more relevant to the realities of academic life in the 21st century. There’s not much if anything in the original document that the AFT objects to. But in discussions this weekend in Portland, Ore., at the AFT’s annual meeting of higher education union leaders, and in a draft of a new statement on academic freedom distributed at the meeting, the AFT is acknowledging that relying on the tenure system to protect professors’ academic freedom doesn’t work when more and more faculty members don’t have, and may never have, tenure.
…The draft policy on academic freedom of the AFT says that non-tenure track faculty members should have:
* Identical freedom to that of tenured faculty members with regard for what they teach or study.
* Participation in selecting instructional materials, defining course content and determining grades. (The statement calls for such decisions to typically rest with a faculty member teaching a particular course, but in cases where a committee of professors makes a decision for a course with many sections, “the principle of participation in such decisions should not be withheld from any faculty members.”
* Full participation in college governance, including eligibility to serve on various committees on a range of topics.
* Full intellectual property rights for materials that they develop.
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