Northwestern’s Faculty Assembly reached quorum for the first time April 21, and in a 338-83 vote — with 35 abstentions — endorsed 10 resolutions by NU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The resolutions accused NU’s administration and Board of Trustees of failing to defend academic freedom; demanded stronger protections for speech, governance and privacy; and called for greater faculty oversight of the Board of Trustees.
Academic freedom refers to the right of professors and students to conduct inquiry free from the influence of the University administration and outside intervention. Enforcement policies vary across private universities — some have principles of academic freedom embedded in faculty contracts. Public universities are legally subject to First Amendment standards of free speech, which the Supreme Court has determined encompasses academic freedom.
Faculty have thrust academic freedom into the national spotlight since the Trump administration froze billions of dollars in federal funding for universities, including $790 million at NU.
“The Northwestern administration acts as though (academic freedom) doesn’t exist,” political science Prof. and NU-AAUP President Jacqueline Stevens, a Daily opinion contributor, said. “It refuses to operationalize the policies that would make academic freedom a fact on the ground.”
NU outlines its statements on academic freedom in the Faculty Handbook. Its policy invokes standards from the AAUP, including the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with interpretive comments added in 1970, and the Statement on Professional Ethics, revised most recently in 2009. Both documents describe in detail the provisions of academic freedom for better understanding and implementing the principles in higher education.
The AAUP guidelines, though not legally binding on their own, promise freedom in research and publication, freedom in teaching and freedom of expression as private citizens for faculty at universities nationwide.
Yet, Stevens said NU leaders are avoiding any tangible commitment to these guidelines by refusing to meet with AAUP leadership and ignoring the resolutions endorsed at the Faculty Assembly meeting. By not acknowledging the resolutions publicly, Stevens said, leaders have made the information and communication about the issues a “black box” for faculty and students.
“We don’t have to guess at what the faculty thinks,” Stevens said. “We know what the faculty think because they voted overwhelmingly in support of these resolutions, and this is the clearest index that we have of what the faculty actually believe.”
Keith Whittington, a Yale University law professor and expert on free speech, said private institutions can voluntarily make their own commitments legally enforceable by writing academic freedom protections into faculty contracts.
“One way of making academic freedom more effective on a campus is to make it legally binding and not just a kind of idealistic goal that the university officials could just ignore if they want to,” Whittington said. “Giving it contractual teeth is important.”
Whittington outlined two central components of academic freedom: the ability to teach controversial material if it’s “professionally appropriate” without interference, and the right to conduct and publish scholarly research without interference.
The right of faculty to speak as citizens in social and political debates has been included as an adjunct aspect of academic freedom since the AAUP developed the term in the statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure beginning in 1913, he said.
Priztker Prof. John McGinnis, who specializes in constitutional law, said academic freedom is limited by the norms of the subject a professor teaches.
“You wouldn’t have the academic freedom if you were a physicist, to teach that the world is flat, or something of that sort,” McGinnis said. “It should be distinguished, in that sense, from free speech.”
The AAUP acknowledges that academic freedom and freedom of speech are related, but not entirely synonymous. However, freedom from repercussions of speech as citizens is listed in the AAUP guidelines in addition to rights of instruction and research.
Ed Yohnka, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois’ director of communications and public policy, said another concerning challenge to academic freedom on college campuses is the growing perception that the presence of controversial speech should be limited because it is deemed harmful.
“The natural result of a free exchange of ideas is that we’re bound to be confronted by ideas that may make us uncomfortable,” Yohnka said.
Princeton University Prof. Robert George, director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, said academic freedom is the method through which universities achieve their truth-seeking mission, whether they are legally held to the standards of the First Amendment or not.
He said universities have a moral duty to respect academic freedom, even if free inquiry leads to a conclusion that challenges a community’s deeply held beliefs.
“Academic freedom means you are free to question orthodoxies — to examine sensitive subjects,” George said. “It’s not because you have some abstract right to academic freedom that falls down from the heavens. You have the right to academic freedom because your job as a teacher and as a scholar and your job as a student is to pursue the truth.”
Whittington said a traditional tool faculty have used to fight back is to publicize violations and make them visible to the larger academic community.
He said faculty across the country are often frustrated at their institutions for failing to prioritize or implement academic freedom policies.
“It’s one thing to write those policies and state them,” Whittington said. “It’s another thing to actually live up to them, and it’s another thing to have any kind of effective remedies when the university violates them.”
Though many universities lack codified academic freedom protections, Whittington said it is essential for institutions to preserve the rights of their faculty and students to teach, research and speak freely.
“A serious commitment to academic freedom is really essential to doing the work that a university is attempting to do, and a university that does not provide that is not really a very serious scholarly institution,” Whittington said.
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Related Stories:
— Faculty Assembly reaches quorum for first time ever, passes NU-AAUP resolutions
— NU AAUP Dispatches: What happened at the April 21 faculty assembly and why it matters
— Faculty Senate passes motion for update in academic freedom language of Faculty Handbook
