Academic Free Speech Research Articles

Academic free speech or right-wing grievance?

A counterpoint to the idea that “academic freedom” should protect bigotry, an evidence-driven case for diversity, and a call to fight White, cisgender, heterosexual male supremacy within the scientific enterprise.

Willed Ignorance: Reflections on academic free speech, occasioned by the David Miller case

Abstract The David Miller case raises the question, does liberal free speech doctrine require academics to defend the antisemitic conspiracy-talk of a sociology professor? The article opens with a discussion of Louise Glück's poem ‘A Myth of Innocence’, and then proceeds towards an answer to this question, pausing to address details of the Miller case itself when the general argument requires it to do so.

Tenure and the Canadian Professoriate

No other aspect of university life is as misunderstood as tenure.1 Even usually clear-eyed John Ralston Saul gets it wrong. Defining it as system of academic job security which has effect of rating intellectual leadership on basis of seniority; he asserts that its initial justification ... was need to protect freedom of speech, due to justifiable fear that controversial professors might suffer at hands of disapproving financial and governmental interests.2 This is mistaken. Tenure long antedates modern concern with academic free speech. It is rooted in three ancient and persistent academic desires: for intellectual independence, collective autonomy and time and financial security needed to carry on scholarly and scientific work. Not only is tenure misunderstood, it is under heavy attack. When I bought my copy of Matthew W. Finkin's Case for Tenure (1996), bookstore clerk read title and said with obvious surprise: The case for tenure? I thought everybody was against it. purpose of this paper is briefly to examine and explain legal and institutional development of tenure in Canada, to sketch debate that surrounds it today, and to discuss its continuing function in academic life. Tenure in Canadian universities has been of two different kinds. At first Englishlanguage institution of higher education established in what is now Canada, King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, professors explicitly enjoyed tenure for life during good behaviour3'(This was akin to tenure that judiciary came to enjoy.) Most universities made no reference to term of office in their charters or early statutes, creating a presumption, particularly in those institutions which were influenced by Scottish university tradition, that tenured professors held their offices for life, though they might be pensioned off when it suited a governing board to vote money. (Formal pension plans did not exist until they were gradually introduced during first half of twentieth century.) Judicial interpretation from 1860 to 1923 did not sustain presumption of life tenure. Wherever principle was tested it was rejected, usually though not invariably in favour of notion that tenured professors, though appointed without term, held their offices during pleasure (that is at discretion) of governing boards of their institutions. Starting with University of Toronto Act of 1906, moreover, tenure during pleasure became legislatively imposed policy of five of six pre-1950 provincial universities. (At sixth, University of New Brunswick, tenure during pleasure had been established by means of judicial interpretation.) Not until 1960s did tenure during pleasure begin to yield to tenure during good behaviour, as faculty associations managed to obtain board approval of dismissal procedures that required cause to be shown before a tenured faculty member could be removed. first British North American case involving tenure took place in New Brunswick. Removed in 1861 from his professorship of classical and modern literature, Edwin Jacob asked Court of Queen's Bench for certiorari, a judicial review, charging that Senate (until 1950s this was name of UNB's governing board) was not legally constituted. court ruled that the offices of Professors ... are not held for any fixed time, nor by any permanent tenure; but ... are held at pleasure of governing bodies of University, i.e., Senate in first place, subject to approval of Crown. Assuming such approval, the Senate may ... remove any of officers, without any formal proceeding in nature of a trial, in same way that a private individual may dispense with services of a clerk or other servant..... No formalities need be observed or notice given.4 Judicial process took a different course in classicist George Weir's suit against board of trustees of Queen's University, but outcome was similar. …