Academic Freedom: Some Resources

By request, a quick bibliography on academic freedom off the top of my… well, not the top of my head, but the top of my EndNote file. With some annotations. I tried to do hanging indents, but WordPress defeated me.

Recommended starting points on academic freedom:

Haskell, Thomas. “Justifying Academic Freedom in the Era of Power/Knowledge.” Originally in The Future of Academic Freedom ed. Louis Menand. In Objectivity is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Haskell crisply lays out the traditional history of academic freedom and its basis in a community of competent inquirers, then tests it against contemporary political and epistemological assumptions.

Metzger, Walter P. “Academic Tenure in America: A Historical Essay.” In Faculty Tenure: A Report and Recommendations, 93-159. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973. Despite title, actually goes back before colonization of America in considering the roots of academic freedom.

Van Alstyne, William W., ed. Freedom and Tenure in the Academy. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Deals mainly with post-1940 relation between law and academic freedom in the United States.

American Association of University Professors. Academic Freedom and Tenure. Edited by Louis Joughin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. Position papers and explorations of arguments for academic freedom.

Online:

American Association of University Professors statements, including the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

The original 1915 statement appears to be online only at Campus Watch.

And because it’s all the rage these days, with respect to the University of California,

Regents’ Standing Order 103.9

On academic freedom

The Faculty Code of Conduct