From the General Secretary: Funding Academic Freedom
By Roger Bowen
Academic freedom is not free. What does this cliché mean? Recently, two faculty members at Benedict College in South Carolina challenged a new grading policy imposed by the college president and were dismissed for "insubordination." They dared to question a mandate forcing faculty to assign grades to first-year students based on the formula of 60 percent for effort (attendance) and 40 percent for actual performance. One of the dismissed faculty members wrote that the president's grading policy "will undermine the academic integrity of my classes and my professional standards as an instructor." Both faculty members turned to the AAUP for financial assistance and advice.
The AAUP pursued this case through its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. (See the resulting report.) It also invited these two courageous professors to apply to the Academic Freedom Fund, one of our few endowed funds, for support in their battle for academic justice. The Academic Freedom Fund was established nearly fifty years ago for "establishing and maintaining academic freedom through research, publication, and assistance to faculties and faculty members in institutions of higher education when need arises, and for related activities." A governing board consisting of AAUP members and supporters acts on recommendations for disbursal of funds by the general secretary.
Since its inception, the Academic Freedom Fund has disbursed almost $500,000. Most awards have gone to scores of individual faculty members to assist them in their battle to preserve their jobs when their academic freedom has clearly been threatened. But the fund has also been used to support conferences and workshops dealing with academic freedom, to help AAUP chapters at colleges or universities where academic freedom has been threatened, to subsidize reports about academic freedom, and to assist special committees dedicated to examining particular aspects of academic freedom.
To read the reasons for the granting of support from the fund is to summarize the fight to protect academic freedom over the past five decades: unfair dismissals, a denial of appointment to an accused Marxist, defense of constitutional rights, a battle against creationism, a situation in which theology trumped the faculty's freedom to profess at a religiously affiliated school, a lecture series about academic freedom, a study of challenges to academic freedom in post-September 11 America, and so on.
The fund has been built through donations made to the AAUP by individuals concerned about protecting the faculty's pursuit of truth to benefit the common good. Donations are restricted to this use, and an annual audit is performed to guarantee compliance. In addition, the fund's governing board reports annually to the AAUP Council on the expenditure of monies.
Academic freedom is not free, but the cost of not protecting academic freedom is too high to contemplate. It is no exaggeration to say that the health of American democracy depends on preserving the right of faculty to profess without fear of intimidation—or of charges of insubordination leveled by a piqued administrator whose appreciation for intellectual honesty is minimal or nonexistent.
Faculty heroism has a price, and the Academic Freedom Fund exists to help faculty to muster the courage to pay that price. Imagine how much courage was needed for the two faculty members of Benedict College to tell its president that they would not sacrifice academic integrity by grading students for anything other than academic achievement. Protecting such faculty rights is vitally important to the health of our profession and to the well-being of the academy.
One need not have a crystal ball to predict that assaults on academic freedom will continue unabated, and one need not be a crass realist to argue that we must act and plan on the assumption that an academic Eden will never be found. It is the solemn duty of the AAUP to prepare for future assaults, to accumulate the resources necessary to fight them, and to prevail. Of course, we will continue to rely heavily on our substantial human resources—the outstanding staff and faculty who lead our Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure—but we must also build the Academic Freedom Fund so that those who would dare to commit "academic crimes" against the freedom of the faculty to profess and conduct research will have to think long and hard before taking us on. We need a war chest, in brief, one equal in monetary value to the ethical value of defending academic freedom.
I urge every reader of Academe to make a financial commitment to the Academic Freedom Fund. Learn more about donating to the AAUP.
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