Do we still need academic freedom?

Abstract

with academic obligation. The activities of the committee on academic freedom and tenure made up most of the agenda of activities of the Association; the committee on academic obligations had never once met, according to Dewey's recollection. The American Association of University Professors was a product of the situation in which some of the leading university teachers in the country thought that, because the academic profession was entitled to respect as a calling, they were entitled to academic freedom. Even in the second decade of the twentieth century, powerful persons outside the universities, and within the universities trustees, presidents, and deans, or heads of departments still regarded their academic staffs as hired hands to be appointed and dismissed at will. Such persons were regarded as the enemies of academic freedom. Although there are still some rough-handed presidents and deans in back-country colleges and state universities, on the whole these traditional enemies of academic freedom are seldom any longer to be seen. In the minds of the American academics who were active in the early years of the Association, academic freedom and permanence of tenure were indissolubly associated with each other. At that time, it was said that the latter was needed to guarantee the former. Academic freedom was declared to be an assurance that new ideas would be discovered, that sound old ideas would be appreciated in a more critical way, and that unsound ones would be discarded. The argument for academic freedom was roughly the argument for liberty in general put forth by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. It was also