First Amendment

Academic Freedom and the First Amendment (2007)

As a legal matter, it can be extremely difficult to determine where faculty members’ rights under academic freedom and the First Amendment begin and end. It can also be difficult to explain the distinction between “academic freedom” and “free speech rights under the First Amendment”—two related but analytically distinct legal concepts. Academic freedom rights are not coextensive with First Amendment rights, although courts have recognized a relationship between the two.

 

Catholicism and Unions: The Case for Adjunct Unions at Catholic Universities

This article addresses recent controversies related to the formation of adjunct unions at several Catholic universities, with a particular focus on Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (the author’s institution). It argues that current efforts underway at several Catholic universities to thwart the formation of adjunct unions are contrary to Catholic teaching and have potentially harmful implications for society as a whole.

The “Textbook Controversy”: Lessons for Contemporary Economics

The “textbook controversy” involved the political suppression of the first Keynesian textbook to appear in the United States, in 1947. This historic event highlight the issue of who “owns” and participates in economic discourse and how the fruits of this discourse are—or should be—disseminated to the broader public.

Civility and Academic Freedom after Salaita

The Salaita case raises at least three distinct issues: (1) the right of faculty to speak out in public on matters of public concern; (2) the academic freedom of academic departments to make academic decisions; and (3) the role of civility in education. Uncivil speech is generally protected by the First Amendment,  but within educational contexts this does not hold. Even where censorship of uncivil speech is legally permissible, however, it is a serious threat to academic freedom. Educators can promote civility without censorship.

Professor Salaita's Intramural Speech

Much of the discourse about the Steven Salaita case seems premised on misunderstandings of concepts that are fundamental to the professoriate. Among these are the distinction between extramural and intramural utterance. Professor Salaita’s tweets, because they directly invoke his area of academic authority, should be considered intramural utterance. 

Opportunities of Our Own Making: The Struggle for "Academic Freedom"

This essay examines David Horowitz’s “Academic Freedom” campaign, specifically exploring how “academic freedom,” a narrative that appears alongside “free speech” discourse frequently since September 11, 2001, can be understood as a site of struggle

On the Ground in Kansas: Social Media, Academic Freedom, and the Fight for Higher Education

This essay explores the Kansas Board of Regents’ recently implemented rules addressing “Improper Use of Social Media” and faculty responses to this policy. It focuses on the moderate response that has predominated and the debates about the relationship between the First Amendment and academic freedom.

Academic Freedom Encompasses the Right to Boycott: Why the AAUP Should Support the Palestinian Call for the Academic Boycott of Israel

In its 2006 report elaborating on its reasons for rejecting academic boycotts, specifically the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, the AAUP wrote, “In view of the Association’s longstanding commitment to the free exchange of ideas, we oppose academic boycotts.” It is not at all clear, however, that opposing the boycott of academic institutions that play central roles in the violation of human rights furthers the free exchange of ideas. I argue here that the AAUP should reassess its blanket opposition to academic boycotts, and that its position should be informed by its own conceptualization of academic freedom and human rights.

Report on the Termination of Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill was dismissed from the University of Colorado (CU) in 2007, having been convicted of plagiarism as well as fabrication and falsification of evidence for his claims that the United States government had been complicit in the genocide of Native Americans. It was Churchill’s essay of September 12, 2001, that drew attention to him— an essay that called victims of the attack on the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns.” For four years the essay, titled “Some People Push Back,” went unnoticed, but in 2005 it caught the attention of faculty and administrators at Hamilton College in New York, and from there it went viral, becoming the topic of nonstop media commentary that lasted for months.

Ward Churchill at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain: Academic Freedom in the Aftermath of 9/11

How many of the three hundred people who gathered around the Dalton Trumbo Fountain in front of the University of Colorado’s student center on March 3, 2005, to hear Ward Churchill speak understood the irony of the location? Trumbo, a successful screenwriter and Colorado alumnus, had been one of the so-called “Hollywood Ten” who were imprisoned and blacklisted for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Churchill, like Trumbo an outspoken radical, had just become the target of a nationwide campaign to eject him from his position as a tenured professor of American Indian studies on the Colorado faculty. In a hasty essay, written to explain why the perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Center would have been so hostile to the United States, he had characterized the 9/11 victims as “little Eichmanns.” That unfortunate phrase, unremarked at the time, emerged with a vengeance three years later in conjunction with a planned speech he was to give at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Catapulted into notoriety by right-wing bloggers and talk-show hosts, Churchill then came under attack by Colorado politicians, who forced the university to investigate and then dismiss its controversial faculty member.

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