Meaning Of Academic Freedom Research Articles

Reflections on the concept of academic freedom

ABSTRACT In this article, the author makes a plea for a rather restrictive meaning of academic freedom, as a professional freedom and not a human right. Such a concept includes three forms of freedom: of research; of teaching; and of freedom of expression. Furthermore, he argues that the idea of academic freedom also implies freedom from authorities, be they political, religious or social.

The Expressive University the Legal Foundations of Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Canada’s Campuses

What can people say on Canada’s university campuses? This question has become especially controversial in the last several years. It is a question that might usefully be addressed by answering another query: What are the legal standards that govern what people may say at Canada’s universities? This question in turn obliges a close inquiry of two distinct, but related concepts: freedom of expression (commonly called “free speech”) and academic freedom. This article aims to redress misunderstandings – and address uncertainties – about how the concepts of free expression and academic freedom apply as a legal matter on Canadian university campuses. After examining the scope of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “free expression” guarantee and controversy over its application to universities, the article expresses doubt that universities will forever remain insulated from the Charter. It then proposes a careful assessment of academic freedom as a workable metric for understanding how Charter-protected free expression would apply to universities. In doing so, it examines how academic freedom has been treated by the courts, presents data from the 95 members of Universities Canada on the scope and meaning of academic freedom, provides a statistical breakdown of its key components, and, highlight how the concept has been applied to speech. The article describes how legal approaches to academic freedom and free speech might dovetail into workable expectations about what can be said on campus. Universities may, in other words, embrace both constitutionally-guarded free expression and academic freedom to create a foundation for understanding the scope of speech on campus.

Book Review: The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom

Book Review: The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom

The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom: Truth-Seeking in Community. By William C. Ringenberg . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xxii + 319 pp. $100.00 hardcover.

The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom: Truth-Seeking in Community. By William C. Ringenberg . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xxii + 319 pp. $100.00 hardcover.

Book Review: The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom: Truth-Seeking in Community. By William C. Ringenberg

Book Review: The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom: Truth-Seeking in Community. By William C. Ringenberg

The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom

The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom

The Dismissal of Father Charles Curran and the Catholic University Strike, April 1967

In April 1967, the board of trustees of Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., dismissed Father Charles Curran from his position as theology professor without any hearing or explanation. In response, the CUA faculty led a campus-wide strike in support of Curran, which succeeded in having Curran reinstated as a professor. The story of the strike narrated below draws from never-before published material from the archives of CUA and the personal papers of key bishops on the CUA board of trustees. The battle which played out at Catholic University centered on the question that consumed Catholic higher education throughout the country during the turbulent years following the Second Vatican Council: “What is the meaning of academic freedom at a Catholic university that seeks to be fully American?” Widespread frustration among Catholic intellectuals with ecclesiastical control found a willing and powerful ally in the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), whose principles had developed during the twentieth century into a quasi-religious ideology of academic freedom in opposition to any and all creedal statements of a priori dogmatic truth. Throughout the 1960s the AAUP waged an aggressive attack on religious institutions of higher education demanding they renounce commitments to denominational interests. The outcome of this high-profile clash of opinions over the nature of bishops’ authority over theology professors remains normative in U.S. Catholic higher education.

Stanley Fish, the Meaning of Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility

Stanley Fish, the Meaning of Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility

Lessons from the Past Illuminate Curran Affair

If the events in the academy during 1986-87, the case of Professor Charles Curran of the Catholic University of America has been notable for the wide discussion it has stimulated on the issue of academic freedom. In the summer of 1986 Professor Curran was judged by the Vatican to be in open dissent from the prevaling orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church and therefore neither suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology. Because of this judgment he has been suspended by his university chancellor from teaching in the Spring Semester of 1987 and three of his classes were cancelled.1 Periodically since the late nineteenth century the meaning of academic free dom has been debated in America in response to such specific external demands for the removal of dissenters from our universities, whether they were pro-German professors of the First World War era or Communist Party members during the McCarthy Red Scare.