Harry Targ
“To gauge student perception of free speech on
Indiana’s public college campuses, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education
will launch a survey to college students on April 5. The survey will be open
throughout the month of April and will ask students to answer questions about
free speech and academic freedom at Indiana public college campuses. Indiana
Commission for Higher Education.” (Wednesday April 6, 2022, Purdue Today).
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(With the return to colleges and universities for
the fall, 2016 term, the issues of academic freedom have reappeared in the
mainstream media. Recently a story was published about a letter the University
of Chicago sent to its incoming students warning that all discourse was fair
game, that “safe spaces” and warnings of uncomfortable subjects would not be
encouraged in the classroom. The hallowed idea of academic freedom was justified
by University of Chicago authorities and echoed by administrators at various
universities. Ironically, as the essay posted below suggests, academic freedom
has always been constrained or censured in higher education, not by radical
students demanding more attention and sensitivity to issues of class, race,
gender, sexual preference, and violence at home and abroad, but those who
oppose such discussions. The defenses of academic freedom today are designed to
stifle the demands for open discussion on these issues rather than encourage
them. Harry Targ, September 8, 2016).
****
The
essay below was posted originally in 2015.With the creation and distribution of
a survey of “student perception of free speech” one wonders if the intent of
the survey is really about Indiana political institutions and university
administrators seeking to censor vibrant discussion in colleges and
universities of issues critical to future generations under the guise of free
speech and academic freedom. April 6, 2022).
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THE UNHAPPY MARRIAGE OF POLITICAL CONTROL AND ACADEMIC
FREEDOM IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Harry Targ
December 1, 2015
And at college after college in recent
years, students have rallied to block appearances by speakers whose views don’t
jibe with current campus orthodoxy. Most of those speakers are conservatives. (Rem
Rieder, “Campuses Need First Amendment Training,” USA Today-Journal and
Courier, November 29, 2015, 8B).
Stories about academic freedom and free speech have
been appearing in newspapers more frequently over the last few weeks. And
curiously enough political actors on and off campus who traditionally have been
least likely to be concerned about these subjects are becoming its major
advocates.
Historically, universities, like most institutions in
society, have been designed by and served the interests of the dominant powers.
Higher education in the United States from the seventeenth century until the
civil war educated theologians and lawyers to take leading positions in the
political and economic system. As the nation was transformed by the industrial
revolution, universities became training grounds and research tools for the
rise of modern capitalism. Young people, to advance the needs of the changing economic system, were educated to
be scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and managers. Economists were
produced to develop theories that justified the essential features of
capitalism.
After the rise of the United States as a world power
in the twentieth century, higher education increasingly included studies of
international relations, weapons systems, and the particular mission of
powerful nations in the world. In sum, the historical function of the
American university since the 1860s has been to mobilize knowledge and trained
personnel to service a modern economy and a global political power.
The conception of the university articulated by
intellectuals through the centuries, however, also implied a space where ideas
about scientific truths, engineering possibilities, ethical systems, the
products of culture, and societal ideals would be discussed and debated (these
were to include unpopular ideas). During various periods in United States
history, during and after the Spanish-American War, the Progressive era, World War
I and its aftermath, the Great Depression, and the Vietnam War era, for
example, the university became the site for intellectual contestation. But
during most periods of United States history controversial ideas introduced in
the academy by faculty or students were subject to repression, firings of
faculty, and expulsion of students. This was particularly true during World War
I and the depths of the Cold War.
It was out of the many forms of repression that
faculty and student associations advocated for the idea of academic freedom.
Articulated by philosopher John Dewey early in the twentieth century and
formalized by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the
principle, not the practice, was enshrined in official statements by both university
administrators and faculty.
Despite the broadly endorsed tradition faculty were
purged from universities during the 1940s and 1950s, not primarily because of
their teaching and research activities, but because of alleged political
associations off campus. Others were fired or did not have contracts renewed
because their teaching and research challenged reigning orthodoxies about
economics, politics, and war and peace. In the 1960s, universities sought to
restrict the free speech rights of students as well.
For a time as a result of the tumult of the 1960s,
universities began to provide more space for competing ideas, theories,
approaches to education, and allowed for some discussion of fundamental
societal problems including class exploitation, racism, sexism, homophobia, and
long-term environmental devastation.
But by the 1990s, reaction against the expanded
meaning of academic freedom set in. The National Association of Scholars was
created by political conservatives to challenge the new openness in scholarship
and debate on campus. Right-wing foundations funded David Horowitz to launch a
systematic attack on faculty deemed “dangerous.” Horowitz unsuccessfully tried
to organize students to lobby state legislators to establish rules impinging on
university prerogatives as to hiring of faculty and curricula. Politicians
targeted scholars deemed most threatening including such noted researchers and
teachers as Howard Zinn, William Ayers, Ward Churchill, and Judith Butler. The
attacks of the last decade were based more on the ideas which “dangerous”
professors articulated than their associations.
Since the upsurge in police violence against African
Americans and terrorist attacks on Planned Parenthood, and rising Islamophobia
and homophobia, a new generation of student activists has emerged challenging
violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Students have protested against
police shootings everywhere and they have linked the general increase in
violence and racism to the indignities they suffer on their own campuses.
In response to the events at the University of
Missouri, student activists around the country have brought demands to
administrators challenging the many manifestations of racism and other
indignities experienced at their schools. The response at almost all colleges
and universities has not been to address the demands raised by students but
instead to change the discourse from the original issues to the protection
of academic freedom and free speech. In other words, university administrators
and media pundits, as the quote above suggests, have swept student complaints
under the rug and have used the time-honored defense of academic freedom and
free speech to ignore the reality of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The
defense of free speech has become a smokescreen.
Academic freedom and free speech must be defended. But
it must be understood that today those who most loudly defend them are doing so
to avoid addressing the critical issues around class, race, gender, homophobia,
and violence that grip the nation and the world.
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Time will tell whether surveys of
university students in Indiana and elsewhere in 2022 will be used by
administrators and state politicians to stifle dissent in the name of “free
speech.” It is of the utmost importance for those interested in preserving the
sanctity of the colleges or universities as places for the discussion of
serious ideas to remain vigilant about these surveys and how they are used.
