January 2012
November 4, 2011
Professor Stephen Toope,
Chair
Association of Universities
and Colleges of Canada
600-350 Albert Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1R 1B1
Mr. Paul Davidson,
President
Association of Universities
and Colleges of Canada
600-350 Albert Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1R 1B1
Dear Prof. Toope and Mr.
Davidson:
We are writing on behalf of the Canadian
Association of University Teachers to express our surprise and dismay with
AUCC’s recently released “Statement on Academic Freedom.” There is a certain
perverse irony that AUCC chose its 100th Anniversary to attempt to
undo many of the advances that have been achieved in the understanding of
academic freedom over the past 100 years.
In 1915, the American Association of University
Professors adopted its influential “Declaration of Principles on Academic
Freedom and Academic Tenure” – the first and arguably most important statement
on academic freedom in North America. One of its key contributions was
recognition that academic freedom includes “freedom of extramural utterance and
action”. This has been a key component of academic freedom since that time.
But it finds no place in AUCC’s new 2011 Statement on Academic Freedom.
Perhaps the majority of the famous academic
freedom cases involve extramural speech, such as Bertrand Russell’s firing at
Trinity College Cambridge and at Columbia University or the foundation academic
freedom case in Canada – the firing of Harry Crowe at United College (now the
University of Winnipeg).
Apparently, according to AUCC in 2011,
extramural speech rights have no place in statements on academic freedom.
Another significant omission is that your 2011
statement makes no mention of academic freedom including the right to criticize
the institution where one works – perhaps a not surprising omission from the
organization representing the executive heads of Canada’s universities – but a
troubling omission nonetheless. CAUT has long defined academic freedom as
including the right “to express freely one’s opinion about the institution, its
administration, or the system in which one works.” This is a central aspect of
academic freedom as it has been understood in Canada, and internationally as
expressed in the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Higher
Education Teaching personnel. It is also part of the great majority of academic
freedom clauses in Canadian university collective agreements at the institutions
whose presidents voted unanimously for a statement that does not mention this
right.
AUCC’s new statement also fails to recognize
that all three of academic staff responsibilities – teaching, research and
service – come under the protection of academic freedom. Your statement fails
to make reference to service, even though, most collective agreements have long
recognized that academic freedom includes freedom to engage in service to the
institution and the community.
Equally of concern is your statement’s
conflation of academic freedom with institutional autonomy. It is absolutely
true that academic institutions must not restrict the freedom of academic staff
because of outside pressure – be it political, special interest group, religious
– and institutions need to be autonomous in that sense. But to pretend that
building a moat around the university protects academic freedom is disingenuous
and ignores the reality of internal threats to academic freedom. The 1915 AAUP
statement arose partially in recognition of internal threats – from boards,
administration, colleagues and students. As the CAUT policy statement on
academic freedom says, “Academic freedom must not be confused with institutional
autonomy. Post-secondary institutions are autonomous to the extent that they
can set policies independent of outside influence. That very autonomy can
protect academic freedom from a hostile external environment, but it can also
facilitate an internal assault on academic freedom. To undermine or suppress
academic freedom is a serious abuse of institutional autonomy.”
We are troubled that your 2011 statement
introduces qualifications for academic freedom that open the door to its abuse:
“Academic freedom is constrained by the
professional standards of the relevant discipline and the responsibility of the
institution to organize its academic mission. The insistence on professional
standards speaks to the rigor of the enquiry and not to its outcome.
The constraint of institutional requirements
recognizes simply that the academic mission, like other work, has to be
organized according to institutional needs. This includes the institution’s
responsibility to select and appoint faculty and staff, to admit and discipline
students, to establish and control curriculum, to make organizational
arrangements for the conduct of academic work, to certify completion of a
program and to grant degrees.”
AUCC is correct that academic freedom is a
professional right but your statement fails to acknowledge any of the nuance
that is now commonplace. “Profession” is both the basis for academic freedom
but can be a source of its abuse. Hence the need to understand “professional
standards” as heuristic devices that themselves are always contested. None of
this subtlety appears in the AUCC statement, leaving a rigid notion of
“professional standards of the relevant discipline” that could countenance
repression of academic freedom for ideas at the margin or ideas that are
critical of the mainstream.
Aswell this section gives incredible
power to the “constraint of institutional requirements” without once affirming
them as collegially determined rather than administratively handed down. This
is especially disturbing as your 1988 statement is careful to note that any
parameters that guide the exercise of academic freedom must be developed
internally, and collectively. It also acknowledges that institutional decisions
rely upon a collective engagement with the intellectual enterprise by the
practitioners of that enterprise. This nuance is lost in the 2011 statement,
which omits reference to the collective project.
In light of the above, we are concerned about
the AUCC claim in the 2011 [not present in your 1988 statement] that “The
university must also defend academic freedom against interpretations that are
excessive or too loose.” By whose definition of “excessive” or “too loose?”
Your 2011 statement’s qualification of academic
freedom continues: “Universities must also ensure that the rights and freedoms
of others are respected, and that academic freedom is exercised in a reasonable
and responsible manner.” The administration’s notion of “reasonable and
responsible” exercise of academic freedom has been at the base of some very
serious violations of academic freedom for decades upon decades. The examples
are numerous.
We also see danger in what might be intended as
innocuous language in your statement: “Faculty have an equal responsibility to
submit their knowledge and claims to rigorous and public review by peers who are
experts in the subject matter under consideration and to ground their arguments
in the best available evidence.” However innocuous the intention, the effect
can be chilling. Do you mean that if peers view one’s work negatively, one no
longer has the academic freedom to pursue the idea? Some ideas are beyond the
bound of any serious scientific basis – that the world is flat or that humans
were created 6,000 years ago. But many other scientific ideas were broadly
panned but proven right (e.g., the bacterial basis of ulcers). And what of
Harvard’s president, during the cold war years, saying that no communist could
teach at Harvard because they could not, by definition, be independent
thinkers? We could go on and on with examples. There is a grain of truth to
the importance of peer review and the professional basis of academic freedom,
but your statement’s crude description opens the door widely to the kind of
abuse we have seen for a hundred years.
On the positive side, we are pleased with the
statement’s affirmation: “Academic freedom does not exist for its own sake, but
rather for important social purposes. Academic freedom is essential to the role
of universities in a democratic society. Universities are committed to the
pursuit of truth and its communication to others, including students and the
broader community. To do this, faculty must be free to take intellectual risks
and tackle controversial subjects in their teaching, research and scholarship.”
We also welcome the statement’s reference to the importance of academic
integrity.
Overall, though, the statement, as we said at
the outset, would reverse 100 years of advancement in the understanding of
academic freedom. With the growing pressures on universities to compromise
their defense of academic freedom in the quest for financial support, we need a
more expansive notion of academic freedom, not a more restrictive one. A major
problem in Canadian universities is not that too many people are asserting their
academic freedom, but that too few are. AUCC’s rendition of academic freedom
will only worsen this problem.
We would be pleased to discuss this matter
further with you, should you wish.
Yours truly,
Wayne D. Peters, President
James L. Turk,
Executive Director
Help us maintain freedom in teaching, research and scholarship by joining SAFS or making a donation.
