Social Science
This passage is adapted from the essay "Are Academics Different?" by Stanley Fish (©2009 Stanley Fish).
Last week's column about Denis Rancourt, a University of Ottawa professor who is facing dismissal for awarding A-plus grades to his students on the first day of class and for turning the physics course he had been assigned into a course on political activism1, drew mostly negative comments.
It may be outlandish because it is so theatrical, but one could argue that Rancourt carries out to its logical extreme a form of behavior many display in less dramatic ways. What links Rancourt and these milder versions of academic acting-out is a conviction that academic freedom confers on professors the right to order (or disorder) the workplace in any way they see fit, irrespective of the requirements of the university that employs them. The response many would make to this accusation is that a teacher's responsibility is to the ideals of truth and justice and not to the parochial rules of an institution in thrall to intellectual, economic and political orthodoxies2.
It would be hard to imagine another field of endeavor in which employees believe that being attentive to their employer's goals and wishes is tantamount to a moral crime. But this is what many (not all) academics believe, and if pressed they will support their belief by invoking a form of academic exceptionalism, the idea that while colleges and universities may bear some of the marks of places of employment-workdays, promotions, salaries, vacations, meetings, etc.-they are really places in which something much more rarefied than a mere job goes on.
An understanding of academic freedom as a right unbound by the conditions of employment goes hand in hand with, and is indeed derived from, an understanding of higher education as something more than a job to be performed; rather it is a calling to be taken up and followed wherever it may lead, even if it leads to a flouting of the norms that happen to be in place in the bureaucratic spaces that house (but do not define) this exalted enterprise. If that's the kind of work you think yourself to be doing, it follows that you would think yourself free to pursue it unconstrained by external impositions.
The alternative is to understand academic freedom as a much more earthbound thing, as a freedom tailored to and constrained by the requirements of a particular job. Statements like this are likely to provoke the objection that academe should not be a Business or a Corporation3. But that is a fake issue. Saying that higher education has a job to do (and that the norms and standards of that job should control professorial behavior) is not the same as saying that its job is business. It is just to say that it is a job and not a sacred vocation, and that while it may differ in many ways from other jobs-there is no discernible product and projects may remain uncompleted for years without negative consequences for researchers-its configurations can still be ascertained (it is not something ineffable) and serve as the basis of both expectations and discipline4.
So these are the two conceptions of academic freedom that are in play: academic freedom as the freedom to do the academic job (understood by reference to university norms and requirements); and academic freedom as the freedom to chart your own way, to go boldly where no man or woman has gone before, constrained only by your inner sense of what is right and true.
That of course is the key question. Are academics different, and if so, in what ways, and to what extent do the differences legitimate a degree of freedom not enjoyed by the members of other professions?5 Chief Judge Wilkinson finds ample evidence in the record to persuade him that "academic speech" is a matter of "public concern" and so rises to the level of constitutional notice. What exactly would the public's interest in academic speech be6 One answer is provided by law professor J. Peter Byrne who argues that a constitutional right of academic freedom exists "not for the benefit of the professors themselves but for the good of society." Why7 Because it is only in universities that a certain kind of speech-"serious and communal, seeking to improve the understanding"-flourishes.
Now I have my elitist moments, but this is a bit much. Only professors, we're being told, do real thinking; other people accept whatever they hear on TV and retail popular (but uninformed) wisdom on street corners. Thus while there is no reason to extend special protections in the workplace to non-academic speech-which is worthless- there is a good reason to extend them to the incomparably finer utterances of the professorial class. It should be possible to acknowledge the distinctiveness without making academic work into a holy mission taken up by a superior race of beings8. Free inquiry means free in relation to the goals of the enterprise, not free in the sense of being answerable to nothing. Those who would defend academic freedom would do well to remove the halo it often wears. Stay away from big abstractions and remain tethered to work on the ground. If you say, "This is the job and if we are to do it properly, these conditions must be in place," you'll get a better hearing than you would if you say, "We're professors and you're not, so leave us alone to do what we like."9