Academic Freedom: What, Where, When, How?

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Ground Rules. To embolden the many by safeguarding the few is a basic A.A.U.P. purpose. In its current statement of principles, made jointly with the Association of American Colleges, it sets the ground rules of academic freedom. Though master of his classroom, the teacher should avoid "controversial matter which has no relation to his subject." Though free to speak up outside the classroom, "he should remember that the public may judge his profession and his institution by his utterances." He should be accurate, respectful of other opinions, and "make every effort to indicate that he is not an institutional spokesman."

In return, A.A.U.P. expects a teacher to get tenure after a probationary period of not more than seven years. He should then be fired "only for adequate cause," such as incompetence or moral turpitude, as judged by a faculty committee and the college governing board, with disputes settled in face-to-face hearings with a defense counsel present.

When a school fires a teacher seemingly without "due process," A.A.U.P.'s "Committee A" (academic freedom and tenure) launches a finecomb investigation. Full details are published in the A.A.U.P. Bulletin. Members may then be asked to vote for censure, which repels not only job seekers, but also such donors as big philanthropic foundations. At its San Francisco meeting, A.A.U.P. swelled the blacklist to 15 campuses, from Pennsylvania's Grove City College (no hearing) to Tennessee's Fisk University (no separation pay). "Once a school gets on our censured list," says A.A.U.P.'s General Counsel, Harvard Law Professor Clark Byse, "it really wants off."

"Commonly Accepted." To some harried college presidents, these limits seem painfully binding. It is hard to get rid of the tenured professor who coasts along, or writes twaddle in letters to newspapers and lends himself to embarrassing causes while riding on the institution's name. Even incompetence is difficult to prove; a side effect of academic freedom is that college presidents do not feel entitled to go into classrooms to check on professorial performance.

Where faculty freedom flourishes, professors who get fired are usually guilty of some act so flagrant that the president believes he can make the ouster stick. In 1960, University of Illinois President David D. Henry fired Biologist Leo F. Koch after Koch wrote a letter to the campus newspaper backing premarital sex among students. Said Koch: "With modern contraceptives and medical advice readily available at the nearest drugstore, or at least a family physician, there is no valid reason why sexual intercourse should not be condoned among those sufficiently mature to engage in it without social consequences and without violating their own codes of morality and ethics."