Annual Meeting Explores Intellectual Freedom

"What binds us together is our common commitment to educating the public," Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the audience at the opening session of "Intellectual Workers and Essential Freedoms: Journalists and Academics in the Twenty-First Century." The conference, sponsored jointly by the AAUP and the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America, took place during the Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., June 8-11.

The cosponsors sought to create a forum in which professors and journalists could analyze the climate for expression of new ideas in the United States and explore threats to academic and press freedom.

According to Strossen, who is also a professor at New York Law School, intellectual workers today face enormous challenges to their First Amendment freedoms. She cited public backlash against freedom of the press in recent years and a Virginia law that forbids state employees, including professors at public universities, from using state-owned or -leased computers to access sexually explicit material, even if the material may be needed for legitimate research purposes. A group of professors, backed by the ACLU, has brought suit against the law. (See the story on page 15.)

Noting that the "ACLU has been in the vanguard of preserving freedom in cyberspace," Strossen said that changing technologies have created new arenas in which free speech advocates must defend traditional civil liberties. By educating the public about the meaning of these liberties, Strossen said, professors and journalists can help to preserve freedoms essential to a democratic society.

Persuading the public will not, however, be an easy job, according to Christopher Edley, Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School. In his luncheon address, Edley said support for freedom of expression for professors and journalists has dwindled because many people believe members of the two professions claim rights and privileges they have not earned. Journalists are often seen as purveyors of trash who are beyond the reach of government regulation or civic criticism, while tenured professors are looked on as "all but impervious to the business cycles that buffet ordinary mortals." To reverse these images, Edley said, professors and journalists will have to learn to talk to the public frankly and respectfully about why protecting intellectual freedom is worthwhile.

In doing so, he added, they must keep in mind that by midcentury, the United States will have a nonwhite majority. "The new demography has parochial implications for our work," Edley argued. "A more diverse population means a dramatically different set of constituents. Our strategy for securing our professional and institutional legitimacy will have to adapt to that new reality." The full text of Edley's address appears in this issue.

When he took the podium, plenary speaker Marvin Kalb told meeting participants that the opportunity for journalists to communicate with the public has never been greater. Kalb, a former correspondent for CBS and NBC news, is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. New technology, Kalb explained, makes it possible for journalists to share information with a much wider audience than in the past; this sharing has had a "dramatic positive effect on the spread of democracy around the world," he said.

But journalism's new technological and economic base has affected American politics negatively as well as positively, according to Kalb. The availability of information would seem to give the public "every opportunity to participate in democracy," he said. But often people feel deluged with information whose reliability they cannot always trust.

In the past, he said, a reporter could research a story for a week or two, but today all news programs and publications focus mainly on making money. As a result, journalists are under tremendous pressure to churn out stories, which has led to an overall decline in the accuracy of news reports. Kalb called on journalists to work together against these pressures to recapture the tradition of accuracy and integrity in journalism.

Following Kalb, AAUP general counsel David Rabban explored the similarities and differences between academia and journalism with respect to the First Amendment. Although both professions face recurring challenges to their members' freedom of expression, he said, academics as a group actually enjoy more protections than do journalists. For one thing, he pointed out, the Supreme Court has recognized academic freedom as a special concern of the First Amendment, but it has not so acknowledged press freedom. For another, the First Amendment applies only to government actions, and media employers are overwhelmingly private. In conclusion, Rabban encouraged journalists to fight for press freedoms using arguments similar to those made for academic freedom.

During a plenary luncheon, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould explored the influence of corporate money on scientific research. Acknowledging the need for corporate support of research, Gould worried that proprietary interests are hindering science in important ways. Today, he said, almost all graduate students in biochemistry work on research funded by pharmaceutical companies. Because the companies hope to profit from the research, they place restrictions on the sharing of information. "Ideally," Gould explained, "scientists are helpful to one another; they share specimens, for example. That's how the field is supposed to work."

Besides encouraging an atmosphere of secrecy, Gould argued, corporations sometimes push research in directions that are not the most productive. He cited work on a vaccine for AIDS. This research began late, he said, because communities in the West focused funding on a search for a cure for people already infected with the AIDS virus. As a result, in poor parts of the world, where a vaccine was needed, the disease has spread dramatically. Despite the need for financial support, Gould said, "we need to find ways to diminish the corporate culture in science."

Morton Bahr, president of Communications Workers of America, was the final plenary speaker for the joint meeting. He reported on how his union works to ensure open access to ideas. Following Bahr's presentation, the AAUP and the Newspaper Guild finalized a joint statement on intellectual workers and essential freedoms, which appears in this issue's AAUP at Work.

A survey conducted by the AAUP after the joint conference found that many members appreciated its intellectual substance. "I really enjoyed meeting and talking with the journalists. The joint meeting was a great idea," one member commented. "Absolutely superb roster of speakers this year," wrote another. "This was my first annual meeting," said yet another. "It has been an eye-opening, richly rewarding experience."

Handing Over the Gavel

This year's AAUP annual meeting marked the end of Jim Richardson's term as Association president and the beginning of Jane Buck's. Richardson is professor of sociology and judicial studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Buck is professor of psychology emerita at Delaware State University. In her remarks to the annual meeting, Buck described the task of educating the public about the importance of traditional academic values as "monumental." She argued that

>if higher education is to survive the bean counters and demagogues, tenured faculty must abandon the relative security of writing only for our colleagues. We must inform the members of the public, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of our work, by writing opinion pieces for our local newspapers and mainstream national journals. We must develop effective ways to reach our lawmakers. The halls of our state legislatures must become as familiar to us as our own campuses. The public is ultimately best served when we continue to fight for our traditional values of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance. We must continue to oppose efforts to turn education into merely the delivery of information, presidents and deans into CEOs and managers, and students into consumers and cash cows. We must meet assaults on affirmative action, remedial instruction, and professorial autonomy with principled argument and irrefutable data.

According to Buck, collective bargaining is one of the most effective ways to protect academic standards and values. "As one who served for over twenty years as president and chief negotiator for my local bargaining unit, and as an active participant in the Collective Bargaining Congress, I am convinced that were it not for collective bargaining, there would be no shared governance, no tenure, and no academic freedom on many of our campuses."

Collective Bargaining Congress

During the meeting, members of the Collective Bargaining Congress elected William Scheuerman of the State University of New York and United University Professions as secretary of the CBC and Donald Greer of the University of Nebraska-Omaha as treasurer. Wells Keddie of Rutgers University and Denise Tanguay of Eastern Michigan University were reelected as at-large members of the CBC Executive Committee. And Carl Schaefer of the University of Connecticut was elected to a first term as CBC at-large representative.

Assembly of State Conferences

Among the business conducted by the Assembly of State Conferences during the annual meeting was the election of three new officers. Honoré Fontes of Mercy College is the ASC's new secretary, George Wharton of Curry College is the new treasurer, and David Patton of Ohio State University was reelected as the liaison to the AAUP's Committee on Government Relations.

In addition, members highlighted this year's Summer Institute, held at Kent State University on July 27-30, as well as the ASC Executive Committee meeting and dinner for local chapter and conference leaders scheduled for October 13 in Dallas-Fort Worth. They also discussed next spring's ASC-CBC regional meeting in Kansas City.

Recipients of the annual ASC Outstanding Print and Electronic Media Awards were the Michigan Conference (Outstanding Non-Tabloid Conference Newsletter); the Connecticut Conference (Outstanding Tabloid Conference Newsletter); Eckerd College (Outstanding Chapter Newsletter); and the Tennessee Conference (Outstanding Web Page).

Meeting Sessions

The meeting's panels, like the plenary sessions, explored questions of intellectual freedom. But unlike the plenary speakers, who focused on broad trends and issues, the panelists grappled with the day-to-day problems facing academics. Several panels drew overflow crowds, including sessions on distance education, intellectual property, collective bargaining, and the corporatization of the university.

Censure and Sanction Developments

On June 9, just before the luncheon address of Stephen Jay Gould, members took up their traditional task of acting on Association reports of violations of academic freedom and tenure, due process, and shared governance on the nation's campuses. Delegates voted to add the University of Central Arkansas and Albertus Magnus College to the list of censured administrations. At the same time, they acted to remove the Illinois College of Optometry from the list and deferred action on the MCP-Hahnemann School of Medicine. The delegates also voted to add Miami-Dade Community College to and remove Francis Marion University from the Association's list of institutions sanctioned for infringements of shared governance. For details, see the Report of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the report on governance sanctions, and Nota Bene in the July-August issue of Academe.

Honors and Awards

As usual, the annual gathering recognized outstanding service to the profession and the Association and exemplary work upholding its principles. U.S. representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) received the Henry T. Yost Award for his work to repeal legislation mandating widespread public disclosure of research data and for his cosponsorship of legislation to coordinate and increase federal research funding. Aaron Bernstein, a senior writer for Business Week, won the AAUP Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education for his May 1999 article, "What Can KO Inequality? College." Bernstein demonstrated, using data based on personal income, graduation rates, and public spending, how society benefits from a better educated, more highly skilled citizenry.

In honor of her leadership in improving the status of academic women and advancing academic collective bargaining, Maita Levine of the University of Cincinnati received the Association's Georgina Smith Award. And in recognition of his unwavering defense of academic freedom throughout his long career in higher education, William H. Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University in St. Louis, accepted the Alexander Meiklejohn Award for Academic Freedom. The text of the nomination submitted in Danforth's behalf and his comments upon receiving the award appear in this issue of Academe.

On hand to collect certificates of appreciation were fifty-year members Louis Ingelhart of Ball State University, Morris Hamburg of the University of Pennsylvania, Mark Kahn of Wayne State University, Dinwiddie Reams of the University of New Haven, Samuel Rosen of the University of New Hampshire, and Robert Weiss of Wayne State University. See below for a list of all the fifty-year members recognized at the annual meeting.

Policy Statements and Resolutions

On June 9 members endorsed two statements presented by the Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication: the "Statement on Graduate Students," published in the January-February 2000 issue of Academe, and "Interpretive Comments on the Statement on Faculty Workload," published in the May-June 2000 issue of the magazine. The statements will appear in the 2000 edition of the Association's Policy Documents and Reports.

Members approved five resolutions during the annual meeting. A resolution urging Catholic bishops to preserve academic freedom when implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae appears in Nota Bene in the July-August issue. The text of the other resolutions follows.

Resolution on Ownership and Control of Faculty Works.

Recent legislation, case law, and campus activities have raised important questions about the ownership and control of works created by faculty members, including course syllabi, lectures, and research findings. Federal legislation, its scope subsequently limited by implementing regulations, initially sought to apply the Freedom of Information Act to all data created by academic researchers in federally funded projects. Some states have interpreted their own freedom-of-information laws as encompassing classroom and research materials in public colleges and universities. Nationwide, private companies have hired students and others to take notes on professors' lectures, and then to give those notes to the companies for commercial distribution. On at least one campus, a commercial firm operating distance education courses "borrowed," without notice or permission, course materials posted on a Web site by a professor.

The Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors believes that colleges and universities flourish when teachers and scholars retain the right to decide when, how, and to whom their works are distributed. The Association's 1999 Statement on Copyright affirms that the prevailing academic practice is for faculty members to be the copyright owners of works that they create at their own initiative for academic purposes. Consistent with the statement, such works should not be redistributed by any other person, whether recorded as notes or by magnetic or digital devices, without the express permission of the author of the work. Because such works are not the property of the college or university, they are not properly subject to freedom-of-information laws that apply to public agencies. Actions taken in disregard of these precepts impair the rights of teachers and scholars to the detriment of their discovery of new knowledge and its appropriate dissemination to students, to the academic profession, and to the public.

Resolution on 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure at Age Sixty.
The Association has continually rededicated itself to the profession's fundamental norms for academic freedom and tenure set forth in the 1940 Statement. The year 1970 witnessed the issuance of Interpretive Comments to accompany the original text. The year 1980 witnessed a major conference of key organizations that had endorsed the 1940 Statement as of that year. The year 1990 witnessed the publication of a comprehensive volume on academic freedom and tenure in commemoration of the document's golden anniversary. The Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting, convened in the year 2000, salutes the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure on the occasion of its sixtieth birthday. We are confident that these guiding principles will retain their strength and durability for many decades to come.
Resolution in Appreciation of Robert A. Gorman.
In his service these past four years as first vice president of the AAUP, Bob Gorman has enhanced the very special contribution he had previously made to the Association and to higher education generally. He has played a leading role in the AAUP for over three decades in formulating policies and in resolving differences when a consensus can be obtained, but showing firmness of conviction when a principle cannot be compromised. This meeting records its gratitude to Bob Gorman, not least because the depth of his commitment to advancing the AAUP's principles and the warmth of his spirit bring out the best in all of us.

Resolution in Appreciation of James T. Richardson.
As president of the AAUP, Jim Richardson has given tirelessly of himself to the Association over the past two years. He has vigorously encouraged us to expand our relations with higher education organizations abroad and to forge ties with other organizations at home. He has been equally vigorous in working to increase our ability to shape the laws affecting higher education in federal and state governments and in the courts. He has tried, with little success, to teach us how to pronounce "Nevada." We commend him for his service to the Association and welcome this opportunity to extend our unanimous thanks for a job well done.

Printer-Friendly Page