Charting Academic Freedom: 103 Years of Debate

National Association of Scholars. 221 Witherspoon Street 2nd Floor, Princeton, NJ 08542-3215. Tel: 609-683-7878; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www.nas.org/

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Academic Freedom; Educational History; Educational Trends; College Faculty; College Students; Court Litigation; Activism; Professional Associations; Intellectual Freedom; Position Papers; Universities; Freedom of Speech; School Responsibility; Political Attitudes; Democracy; Federal Legislation; Educational Legislation

America faces a growing crisis about who can say what on our college campuses. At root this is a crisis of authority. In recent decades university administrators, professors, and student activists have quietly excluded more and more voices from the exchange of views on campus. This has taken shape in several ways, not all of which are reducible to violations of "academic freedom." The pages in this report are parts of a single chart that compares fourteen published statements on academic freedom in twenty-five categories. The oldest of the statements is the 1915 "Declaration of Principles" from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The newest is the April 29, 2017 "Statement of Principles: Free Expression on Campuses issued by Students for Free Expression." In addition to the chart, the report includes: (1) an annotated Timeline of Academic Freedom, with notable events such as Supreme Court decisions and riots; (2) a list of significant Other Resources by organizations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the Heterodox Academy; and (3) a Select Bibliography.

ERIC

2019

ED595186