Summary and Comments
The Students For Academic Freedom website details its campaign for legislation at the state and federal levels, mandating the implementation of their agenda on public (and sometimes private) college campuses. The website features a template for such legislation, which can be copied by any interested state legislator. The following paragraphs summarize the legislative template; actual bills introduced have varied. (See state legislation.) The AAUP comments offered below are excerpts from the AAUP Statement on the Academic Bill of Rights, issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure in December, 2003. References are provided for other relevant AAUP policy statements, posted elsewhere on this website.
(1) The 'bill of rights' section asserts five sets of rights for students, three for faculty, and one to be shared by students and faculty. Some are new proposals, some refer to parts of the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students adopted by the AAUP and other national student, faculty, and administrative groups in 1967, and one proposes an expanded application of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
(a) For students. Asserts a right of "access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion." This section also states that, particularly in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, the institution should foster a "plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives." (Italics inserted.)
(Note: This section is presumably modified by section (1) (g) below that exhorts against hiring, promotion, etc. on the basis of political and religious beliefs.)
AAUP Comments:
"The danger of such [institutional fostering of a plurality of methodologies and perspectives] is that it invites diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession. Measured in this way, diversity can easily become contradictory to academic ends.
"The appropriate diversity of a university faculty must ultimately be conceived as a question of academic judgment, to be determined by the quality and range of pluralism deemed reasonable by relevant disciplinary standards, as interpreted and applied by college and university faculty.
"Advocates for the Academic Bill of Rights, however, make clear that they seek to enforce a kind of diversity that is instead determined by essentially political categories, like the number of Republicans or Democrats on a faculty, or the number of conservatives or liberals. Because there is in fact little correlation between these political categories and disciplinary standing, the assessment of faculty by such explicitly political criteria, whether used by faculty, university administration, or the state, would profoundly corrupt the academic integrity of universities."
Reference: Contrast with AAUP Statement on College and University Government, Section 5 The Faculty: The primary responsibility of the faculty for such matters [as appointments, promotions, tenure, etc.] is based upon the fact that its judgment is central to general education policy. Furthermore, scholars in a particular field or activity have the chief competence for judging the work of their colleagues...
(b) For students. Asserts a right to grading based on "reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects they study" and not on their "political or religious beliefs."
AAUP Comments:
"A basic purpose of higher education is to endow students with the knowledge and capacity to exercise responsible and independent judgment. Faculty can fulfill this objective only if they possess the authority to guide and instruct students.
"AAUP policies have long justified this authority by reference to the scholarly expertise and professional training of faculty. College and university professors exercise this authority every time they grade or evaluate students.
"Although faculty would violate the indoctrination principle were they to evaluate their students in ways not justified by the scholarly and ethical standards of the profession, faculty could not teach at all if they were utterly denied the ability to exercise this authority."
Reference: See AAUP's Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students: Students should have protection against prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation.
"Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion, but they are responsible for learning the content of any course of study for which they are enrolled."