Review of the Literature: The History of Academic Freedom

By John K. Wilson

 

The writings on the history of academic freedom are vast, but often fail to illuminate what the meaning of academic freedom is, or should be, or how it has been restricted in America. The broad, general histories written by Hofstadter and Metzger cover only the early years of American colleges and universities, while later histories focus primarily on one particular era. However, these histories provide a vast pool of information about how academic freedom evolved in 20th Century America.

 

Pre-1900

Hofstadter, Richard (1955). Academic Freedom in the Age of the College. New York: Columbia University Press.

A leading work on the early origins of academic freedom in America, Hofstadter calls academic freedom “a modern term for an ancient idea,”(p. 3) harkening back to the European universities in the Middle Ages. However, Hofstadter observes that American colleges were created out of a very different tradition, as training grounds for religious leaders. Because the early American colleges were an outgrowth of churches, they relied upon a similar hierarchical structure and did not tolerate heresy.

The 18th Century trend toward secularization in American colleges marked the first change toward academic freedom. As colleges served a broader population, and public colleges grew during the 19th Century, a more secular ideal of higher learning began to prevail.

The fight for religious liberty in higher education was the forerunner of academic freedom, before the term was ever used in America. Hofstadter also notes the transitory nature of American colleges in the 19th century, when many colleges folded for lack of resources and new colleges were created. Hofstadter argues that although these early movements created a greater appreciation for liberty, the essence of the idea of academic freedom resides in the professionalization of the faculty.

 

Metzger, Walter (1955). Academic Freedom in the Age of the University. New York: Columbia University Press.

The American research university was a hybrid of the German University and the English College. Designed to imitate the German university where research was emphasized, the American university adopted but adapted the two German principles of Lehrfreheit and Lernfreheit. According to Walter Metzger, Lehrfreheit meant "the university professor was free to examine bodies of evidence and to report his findings in lecture or published form--that he enjoyed freedom of teaching and freedom of inquiry."(Metzger, 112-3) Lernfreheit meant that students "were free to roam from place to place, sampling academic wares; that wherever they lighted, they were free to determine the choice and sequence of courses, and were responsible to no one for regular attendance; that they were exempted from all tests save the final examination; that they lived in private quarters and controlled their private lives."(Metz, 112) This freedom for professors was necessary in order to provide opportunities for specialization and development of new ideas which drove the research university.

However, the American universities never fully accepted these German principles. Students never had the full freedoms implied by Lernfreheit, although in many universities the traditional fixed curriculum was dramatically weakened. And although some verbal support was given to the idea of academic freedom, in practice it was greatly limited and not institutionalized until the formation of the AAUP in 1915. In the first American universities, the idea of academic freedom was given lip service, but Metzger notes many cases where even the most prestigious universities buckled to public pressure for restrictions on the freedom of scholars.

 

1900s

Saltmarsh, John (1991). Scott Nearing: An Intellectual Biography, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Saltmarsh’s book details the firing of Scott Nearing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1915 for his pacifist views. Nearing (who was later fired by Toledo University for opposing U.S. involvement in World War I) is notable not only for being one of the most famous cases of academic freedom, but also because he was the first major victim of nationalism, rather than economic ideology or religion. Nearing’s case marked the way for future examples of nationalist violations of academic freedom, and also served as one of the first cases for the newly formed American Association of University Professors.

 

Gruber, Carol (1975). Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Use of the Higher Learning in America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Gruber examines how war affected the emerging concept of academic freedom. Pacifists, Germans, and anyone who defended them could be subject to punishment and dismissal on college campuses. James McKeen Cattell, a leading psychology professor at Columbia for 26 years, was fired in 1917 by the trustees on the grounds of "sedition," "treason," and "opposition to the effective enforcement of the laws of the United States."(Gruber, 189) Columbia had tried three times earlier to make Cattell retire because of his criticisms of administration policy. It finally got a chance to get rid of him when he wrote a letter to three congressmen in support of "a measure against sending conscripts to fight in Europe against their will."(Gruber, 196) Defending conscientious objectors was considered treasonous behavior.

 

Veblen, Thorstein (1957). The Higher Learning in America. New York: Sagamore Press. [Originally published in 1918.]

Written in 1906, Veblen’s classic analysis of higher education as a business did not directly address many incidents of academic freedom. However, Veblen identified the economic forces driving much of the censorship in higher education during the early 20th Century.

Subtitled, “A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men,” Veblen saw boards of trustees and presidents as subservient to business interests, and urged their abolition. Veblen was skeptical of both undergraduate colleges and professional schools, seeing graduate schools as the pure pursuit of knowledge being corrupted in American universities. During an era when economic orthodoxy provoked many of the attacks on academic freedom, Veblen recognized the powerful business interests that provided much of the money—and the control—for higher education.

 

Sinclair, Upton (1936). The Goose Step: A Study of American Education. New York: Albert & Charles Boni Publishing. [Originally published in 1923.]

Sinclair’s often-overlooked critique of higher education is remarkable because it identifies specific violations of academic freedom across the country. Unfortunately, Sinclair’s reliability can be questioned. Sinclair jabs at various institutions, mostly relying upon unverified reports from anonymous informants. However, The Goose Step is one of the most extensive—and entertaining--sources on academic freedom in the early 20th century.

 

1930s

A 1931 report by the ACLU, "The Gag on Teaching," identified numerous examples of censorship on college campuses. In post-war America, academic repression continued, often reflecting the same economic issues that had previously caused controversy. In 1926, John Kirkpatrick was fired from Olivet College because his book, The American College and its Rulers, attacked the control of higher education by business interests. Many faculty were fired for similar offenses.

Colleges frequently suspended students for expressing liberal views and banned radicals from speaking on campus. At the University of Minnesota, 36 students were suspended for opposing military training, although 24 were later reinstated after legal action was taken. Editors at several student newspapers were expelled for printing criticism of their college.

The ACLU report concluded that some colleges "are so tightly controlled that no teachers are employed likely to raise issues, and student discussion of controversial matters in their own societies is not tolerated. In some place only 'safe and sane' men are hired. In others one year contracts are made and tenure of office has been cut so that a troublesome man can be let out without raising the issue of his views. In some colleges a whole course has been eliminated or a department reorganized to get rid of too independent a teacher."(ACLU, Gag, 23)

 

Cohen, Robert (1993). When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America’s First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Cohen’s book is the authoritative source on student rights in higher education during the 1930s, and he makes several important revelations about FBI spying on students during this era, with the assistance of academic deans or other college employees.

From the mid-1930s to 1941, the FBI collected in its files "the names of two thousand students" actively involved in the student movement at the University of Chicago. An unknown informant in the Dean's office provided the FBI with the membership list of the American Student Union.(Cohen, 99) This cooperation with the FBI occurred at virtually every college, and Cohen estimates that the names of more than a thousand informants from this period are in FBI files, but are deleted by FBI censors even today.(Cohen, 336)

Cohen, who found at least 43 leading colleges which gave information to the FBI, usually from high-ranked officials, noted: "In more than 3000 pages of FBI documents covering the student movement of the Depression decade, I did not find a single case in which a college or university administrator refused to cooperate with the FBI. None expressed any concern that informing on students might constitute a violation of their rights."(Cohen, 366)

The rights of students were virtually nonexistent during this era. Courts held that colleges could expel students without a hearing, and the New York Court of Appeals upheld the expulsion of a Syracuse University student solely on the justification that she was not a "typical Syracuse girl."(Cohen, 60)

Cohen found at least 53 colleges which overtly restricted the free speech rights of students between 1933 and 1935, including Harvard, MIT, Columbia, and Berkeley.(Cohen, 105) These included 14 campuses with violent attacks against student radicals, 17 colleges which banned anti-war meetings or student rallies, 8 campuses which banned radical organizations, 16 colleges which expelled or suspended students who held lawful protests, and 16 colleges which censored anti-war publications or student newspapers.(Cohen, 370-1)

Cohen’s book is also notable because it includes an analysis of racism on college campuses, and how segregation kept black students on many campuses from living or eating with white students.

 

1940s

Cardozier, V.R. (1993). Colleges and Universities in World War II. Westport: Praeger.

Academic freedom during World War II has received relatively little scholarly attention. Cardozier’s leading work notes that the popularity of the war against Nazism squelched much of the usual leftist opposition to war, so there were fewer controversies on college campuses.

Cardozier notes that in World War II, "excesses were in no way comparable to those of World War I, particularly on college campuses."(Cardozier, 216) But academic freedom was still infringed. In 1943, Notre Dame reportedly dismissed an associate professor of philosophy who had spoken publicly in favor of Russia against anti-Semites and Fascists, and who refused to submit his speeches for prior review.

Anti-war protest was rarely suppressed, but this was mainly because few people opposed the war. However, Cardozier notes, "There were several well-known cases of infringement of academic freedom during the war--as before and since--but most of them dealt with questions unrelated to the war, such as lewd textbooks and the teaching of socialism."(Cardozier, 216)

 

1950s: McCarthyism

Buckley, William F., Jr. (1951). God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom.” Chicago: Regnery.

Today, Senator Joseph McCarthy is a figure almost universally reviled. His name has become synonymous with tyranny, and the phrase “McCarthyism” is a favorite insult of all sides in the culture wars.

Yet in the early years of the Cold War, McCarthy and McCarthyism had many defenders. One of McCarthy’s admirers was William F. Buckley, the conservative commentator who influenced a generation of academics with his 1951 attack on liberalism at Yale, God and Man at Yale.

Buckley, who went on to start the conservative magazine National Review, attacked Yale University because he believed it had failed to enforce a conservative ideology on its faculty and students. Buckley complained, for example, that the Religion Department did not have "a remarkably pro-religious bias."(p. 9) He attacked the presence of an atheist professor because students might become "full of suspicions and doubts about religion"(p. 13) and a sociology professor who "subverted the faith" of students.(p. 17) Most horrifying of all, Buckley reported that "several atheists and agnostics" were used as ushers at chapel.(p. 29)

Religion was not the only faith which Buckley felt was inadequately indoctrinated. Buckley criticized the American Studies department because it did not follow a major donor's demands for it to support "the preservation of our System of Free Enterprise" and be "opposed to a system of State Socialism, Communism and Totalitarianism"(p. 101) Buckley adds about the Economics department, "of the nine full professors in the department, only four are forthright defenders of individualism."(p. 99) Buckley believed that Yale would not be set right until every economist defended "individualism" against Keynesian theories of economics. It is worth noting that Buckley's complaint was purely ideological; he makes no contentions about the quality of the faculty.

Buckley's complaints may seem comical today, since he was arguing that Yale failed to be sufficient conservative enough when it permitted a few mildly unorthodox thinkers in its unquestionably conservative faculty. For Buckley, it seemed (and seems) perfectly natural for a religion department to indoctrinate his view of Christianity and for the Economics and American Studies departments to inculcate love for the free market without any dissent. To have anything less than total agreement on these values in the faculty was evidence of a threat to American values.

But for all his praise of "individualism," liberty is curiously absent from Buckley's theory of academic freedom. Individuals, he says, do not have academic freedom, except the freedom to quit: "no freedom has been abridged so long as he is at liberty to quit his job"(p. 187) and can "seek employment at a college that was interested in propagating socialism."(p. 189) Of course, no college was propagating socialism in the 1950s, so Buckley was effectively supporting a blacklist of "socialist" thinkers from universities. To Buckley, "academic freedom must mean the freedom of men and women to supervise the educational activities and aims of the schools they oversee and support."(p. 190) In other words, the trustees and administrators have the freedom, not the students and faculty. As Buckley bluntly put it, "the attitudes of the faculty ought to conform to the university's."(p. 181)

Buckley supported strong measures to remove "the predominance of leftism"(p. 112) at Yale. He urged the removal of some professors. Buckley even complained about President Seymour (who in 1937 urged a return to Christian values and who also refused to knowingly hire a Communist) because he did not "exorcise the extreme secularism" at Yale.(p. 43, 225) Seymour did not go far enough in getting rid of liberal faculty.

Buckley’s wholehearted endorsement of McCarthyism, and his demand for alumni boycotts until trustees purged their atheist and liberal professors, never had much of a following on college campuses.

 

Hook, Sidney (1953). Heresy, Yes, Conspiracy, No. New York: John Day.

But another, more limited argument was made by campus liberals who did not endorse all of the thuggish tactics of McCarthy. Sidney Hook, among others, argued that communists were not entitled to academic freedom because the nature of the communist ideology restricted the freedom of its members to speak. Since they had already sacrificed their academic freedom by joining the Communist Party, Hook and many other liberals felt that communists should be fired.

Hook's 1953 book Heresy, Yes, Conspiracy, No sought a "middle ground" between the most conservative antisubversives and those who defended Communists. According to Hook, the most extreme anti-Communists had "attacked as a menace to American freedom and security men and ideas that are not only non-Communist but sometimes anti-Communist."(p. 9) However, he said, the other side tended to "dismiss too lightly the conspiratorial character of the Communist movement."(p. 10)

Hook proposed to take a moderate position by distinguishing between heresy and conspiracy. Heresy "is a set of unpopular ideas or opinions on matters of grave concern to the community."(p. 21) By contrast, a conspiracy "is a secret or underground movement which seeks to attain its ends not by normal political or educational processes but by playing outside the rules of the game."(p. 22)

Hook opposed loyalty oaths (mainly because it resulted only in "the punishment of non-Communists"(p. 43)), but he attacked those "who do not tell us how to meet the real dangers of Communist conspiracy but shout 'Hysteria!' 'Fascism!' or 'Police State!' when the first faltering efforts are made to cope with dangers hitherto unprecedented in the history of American democracy."(p. 32)

According to Hook, anyone who remained a Communist provided "prima facie evidence that he is a hardened conspirator and that he accepts its orders and directives." Covering all bases, Hook concluded that anyone who was a Communist without being a "hardened conspirator" would be "ineligible on grounds of lack of intelligence for any responsible job."(p. 89) Since American Communists were members of "the international Communist movement" which is "a clear and present threat to the preservation of free American institutions and our national independence," they met the "clear and present danger" test for revoking any free speech rights.(p. 109)

While Hook ostensibly defended academic freedom, he used his definition of rationality to exclude any radicals from its protection. Academic freedom required following the "authority of the rational methods by which truth is established."(p. 154) The scholar must have "objective judgment on those controversial issues which arouse and sometimes divide the community."(p. 156) Not surprisingly, Hook believed that a "Communist" did not use objective judgment or rational methods (since otherwise they would inevitably see the evils of communism and its "intellectual somersaults"), so Communists had sacrificed the right to academic freedom when they lost their freedom to inquire into truth.(p. 204)

Hook’s distinction between heresy and conspiracy has been an influential factor in the development of higher education. According to this theory, the role of the professor is to express unusual ideas, but without any practical consequences. Because the purely theoretical professor is perfectly harmless, there is no reason to restrict academic freedom. But when a professor’s ideas have political impact, then they become a threat to the country. The activism of the 1960s, where student and faculty radicals demanded a more relevant, political education, directly challenged Hook’s ideal of the professor expressing ideas without political impact.

 

Lazarsfield, Paul & Thielens, Wagner (1958). The Academic Mind. Glencoe: Free Press.

The Academic Mind, published in 1955 by Lazarsfeld and Thielens, stands unique as the only substantive survey of academic freedom ever done in American higher education. The Lazarsfeld study found that "approximately half of American social science teachers detected a decline in intellectual and academic freedom."(Lazarsfeld, 39) The 2,451 respondents reported 990 incidents at 102 of the 165 schools in the sample.(Lazarsfeld, 46, 251) Out of all the incidents, 29% involved charges of Communism or subversion and 13% left-of-center political views, while only 2% dealt with right-of-center political views.(Lazarsfeld, 50) Faculty at more than 100 colleges were asked about their freedom to speak and teach, and specific examples as well as survey data were collected.

The Academic Mind had a dramatic effect in providing clear-cut evidence that repression of academic freedom was widespread in American colleges. All of the theoretical arguments about the rights of communists seemed less important when it became clear that a large number of non-Communist faculty were suffering from this wave of repression.

But it was not until the Supreme Court began to rule loyalty oaths and firings of left-leaning professors unconstitutional that the McCarthy Era on college campuses truly came to end in the early 1960s. Even then, various restrictions on campus activism continued until the late 1960s, when campuss revolts helped to end them. Still, even today many professors at state universities sign loyalty oaths promising not to endorse the violent overthrow of the government.

 

Schrecker, Ellen (1986). No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. New York: Oxford University Press.

Strangely, the scholarship about the McCarthy Era took many more years to develop. The key work in the field is Ellen Schrecker’s 1986 study, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Schrecker made two key arguments that changed the understanding of McCarthyism: first, she noted that most of the victims of McCarthyism in higher education were not Communist Party members (because so few actually taught in colleges), but ex-communists or principled liberals who refused to cooperate with McCarthyesque investigations. Second, Schrecker found that colleges and universities, far from resisting McCarthyism, actually cooperated and even instigated many of the efforts to remove dissenting faculty. The myth of McCarthyism told in higher education was that colleges were victims of outside political forces, which they heroically fought of but could not always defeat: As Roger Geiger puts it, "McCarthyism was essentially imposed on universities from outside.”(Geiger, 38)

Schrecker shattered that myth, instead telling a story of administrators and faculty who were complicit with McCarthyism and failed to protect the ideal of academic freedom. Schrecker found that "Professors and administrators ignored the stated ideals of their calling and overrode the civil liberties of their colleagues and employees in the service of such supposedly higher values as institutional loyalty."(Schrecker, 340) Schrecker concluded, "The academy's enforcement of McCarthyism had silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and snuffed out all meaningful opposition to the official version of the Cold War. When, by the late fifties, the hearings and dismissals tapered off, it was not because they encountered resistance but because they were no longer necessary. All was quiet on the academic front."(Schrecker, 341)

Although earlier scholars had hit upon similar findings (most notably, James Selcraig’s 1982 The Red Scare in the Midwest, 1945-1955), Schrecker was the first to analyze McCarthyism in higher education nationally and understand the close links between colleges and McCarthyism.

 

Lewis, Lionel (1988). Cold War on Campus. New Brunswick: Transaction.

Schrecker was condemned by conservative critics, but her findings were largely confirmed by Lionel Lewis in his more systematic 1988 book Cold War on Campus. Lewis studied 126 cases on 58 campuses where professors were investigated for their beliefs, and concluded that "Academic authorities were as much a threat to faculty and to their academic freedom as were the ominous political forces off campus."(Lewis, 5) Less than 20% of the professors still had their jobs after the investigation was complete; the rest were fired or resigned under the pressure.(Lewis, 61) He found that 85% of them cooperated with the universities who investigated them; some, however, refused to answer questions similar to those asked by HUAC.(Lewis, 45) Professors were investigated for being summoned before HUAC and other legislative investigating committees, for participating in the 1948 Wallace campaign, for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, and even for signing petitions asking amnesty for Communists convicted under the Smith Act.(Lewis, 49) In 35% of the cases, the professor was fired within two weeks of testifying, often based on press reports of the incident.(Lewis, 75)

Rarely did colleges show much support for academic freedom. Lewis notes, "In only three instances did an institution stand firm behind someone who could easily have been sacrificed without extensive repercussions."(Lewis, 76) In 40% of cases, the administration never clearly stated the central issues of the controversy.(Lewis, 117) Lewis says, "Those faculty who did not cooperate with administrative authorities, and as a consequence were seen as having failed in their institutional obligations, were invariably fired."(Lewis, 264) Lewis declares, "external pressures were of little significance compared to internal imperatives to remove so-called radicals from the faculties of colleges and universities."(Lewis, 267) Although external powers did exist, "administrative responses were more often anticipatory than reactive."(Lewis, 268)

 

Diamond, Sigmund (1992). Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955. New York: Oxford University Press.

Diamond extended the analysis of the anti-communist movement, and particularly looked at the links between universities and the FBI. Diamond found that not only did American universities actively work with the anti-communist movement, but they secretly used FBI information to help expel or keep out dissidents.

Diamond’s analysis also extends to the 1960s, where he reports that the FBI worked with universities, providing confidential information to colleges such as MIT to have radical instructors dismissed.

 

 

1960s and 1970s

Hamilton, Neil W. Zealotry and Academic Freedom; A Legal and Historical Perspective: New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 1995.

Hamilton outlines several waves of “zealotry” which endangered academic freedom, and argues for a cyclical theory of repression in higher education. Hamilton’s analysis of pre-1960s academic freedom follows conventional lines about outside conservative forces trying to restrict radicalism within academia. In the 1960s, however, Hamilton argues that the reverse was true: leftist radicals infringed upon academic freedom by using threats and violence on college campuses.

Both Hamilton’s cyclical theory and his one-sided portrayal of the 1960s are not well proven. By omitting any of the firing of 1960s radicals, the expulsion of students, and the violence against protesters, Hamilton reaches his conclusions only by refusing to see most of the evidence.

 

Heineman, Kenneth (1993). Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era. New York: New York University Press.

Heineman, Kenneth (2001). Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels: Student Revolt in the 1960s. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

Heineman’s histories of academia in the 1960s echo Hamilton’s critique of student radicals as intolerant zealots. Heineman notes that between January 1969 and April 1970, radicals bombed five thousand police stations, offices, military facilities, and campus buildings across America, and 26,000 students “were arrested and thousands injured or expelled while engaged in protest activities.”(p. 3)

Heineman’s revisionist analysis of the McCarthy Era concludes that it was not a significant threat to academic freedom, and “the sheltered radical professors and graduate students of the 1950s became the core of the 1960s campus-based New Left.”(p. 14) Instead, Heineman sees the radical movements of the 1960s as a far greater threat to academic freedom.

 

Todd Gitlin (1987). The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.

Gitlin tells a slightly different story about the years of campus unrest. Gitlin does not deny the prevalence of violence on campus; Gitlin estimates that in 1968-69 more than 100 politically inspired bombings, attempted bombings, and acts of arson on American campuses. In the Spring of 1969, more than 300 colleges had large demonstrations; more than 75 included strikes or building takeovers; 75 more included disruption of classes; more than 60, by Gitlin's estimate, included bombs, arson, or destruction of property.(Gitlin, 342-3) Gitlin says from September 1969 to May 1970, there were 250 major bombings and attempts linked to the Left, and government figures suggest the number may have been six times higher.(Gitlin, 401) Unfortunately, Gitlin’s book is a cultural history that does not focus on colleges or academic freedom, so he draws few conclusions about the relative threats to free expression.

 

Goldstein, Robert (2001). Political repression in modern America from 1870 to 1976 (2nd Ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Richard Goldstein’s Political Repression in America details police and FBI efforts, in concert with some administrators, to stop campus protests in the 1960s and 1970s. Goldstein reports that some of the violence was actually instigated by FBI informers and other police agents. Goldstein notes, "one Chicago police agent led an SDS sit-in and participated in a Weatherman action which ended in his expulsion from Northeastern Illinois State College for throwing the college president off a stage."(Goldstein, 507) Two of the four people who closed the gates at Ohio State University in April 1970 were undercover agents from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.(Goldstein, 508) A Kent State student arrested for possessing a submachine gun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher was released and even reinstated by the university after he was revealed to be a university undercover agent planted in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who had turned him in to police.(Goldstein, 512-3)

And violence was often directed against students, including several “police riots” and several killings, the most famous of which in Kent State provoked nationwide protests. During the turmoil of 1969 and 1970, 32 states passed nearly 80 laws dealing with campus protests, often requiring the withdrawal of financial aid or the immediate expulsion of students or faculty who violated campus rules. Faculty such as Staughton Lynd, Michael Parenti, Angela Davis, and Bruce Franklin, who supported the campus movements, were commonly punished or fired for their views. A U.S. Senate committee found that by April 1971, when the program ended, the New Left was the target of 290 disruptive actions by the FBI, about 40 percent of which aimed to prevent radicals from communicating their ideas.(Goldstein, 452) Although Goldstein’s book does not exclusively focus on academia, the importance of higher education to the anti-war movement was reflected in the efforts at repression aimed at American faculty and students.

 

Piliawsky, Monte (1982). Exit 13: Oppression & Racism in Academia, Boston: South End Press.

Although he focuses on the University of Southern Mississippi and the turmoil of the civil rights movement at segregated colleges in the South, Piliawsky examines the fate of radical instructors who were fired by colleges across the country during the 1960s and 1970s. USM used speaker bans and fired advisors to liberal groups in order to maintain order on campus. The FBI’s Cointelpro was used against academics such as Bruce Franklin, Morris Starsky, and Harry Edwards to get scholars fired from elite institutions such as Stanford, Arizona State, and Berkeley. Piliawsky’s book is the rare “college biography” that focuses on academic freedom issues and honestly confronts the threat posed by institutions to free expression.

 

1980s and beyond

Bloom, Allan (1987). The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Sykes, Charles (1988). Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway.

Csorba, Les, ed. (1988). Academic License: The War on Academic Freedom. Evanston: UCA.

Kimball, Roger (1990). Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. New York: Harper & Row.

D’Souza, Dinesh (1991). Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: Free Press.

Hentoff, Nat (1992). Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other. New York: HarperCollins.

Anderson, Martin (1992). Imposters in the Temple. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Bromwich, David (1992). Politics By Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Rauch, Jonathan (1993). Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bernstein, Richard (1994). Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America’s Future. New York: Knopf.

Jacoby, Russell (1994). Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Culture Wars Divert Education and Distract America. New York: Doubleday.

Wilson, John (1995). The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. Durham: Duke University Press.

Kors, Alan Charles, and Silverglate, Harvey (1998). The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. New York: Free Press.

 

Conservative critiques of higher education in the 1980s typically followed the longstanding tradition of conservative opposition to academics: the theory that left-wing professors should not be allowed to corrupt youth with their evil theories.

But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the conservative critique morphed into a new form: an attack on “political correctness.” Instead of primarily opposing academic freedom, the right presented itself as the defender of academic freedom. D’Souza’s best-selling book marked a breakthrough for conservative thought and the first right-wing embrace of academic freedom as a desirable value.

By attacking some misguided academic policies restricting free speech, and recycling a small group of often-distorted anecdotes, the right created the belief that American colleges were controlled by a cabal of left-wing ex-hippies who relentlessly repressed the free speech rights of conservative students and faculty.

A liberal counterreaction (Jacoby, Wilson) argued that these dire alarms about the death of academic freedom were overwrought. However, they did note that the late 1980s and early 1990s were unusual because, for the first time, conservatives were among the victims of violations of academic freedom in significant numbers. However, this did not reflect a crisis in academic freedom: professors fired for their beliefs were much rarer than in earlier eras, and the primary victims of censorship were still liberal faculty and students, especially at religious institutions.

 

Conclusion

Despite the bad publicity and the occasional censorship, higher education at the end of the 20th Century represented a remarkable advance in freedom of expression. Ideas and people once largely banned from American intellectual society were being expressed in new movements devoted to diversity. The commitment to academic freedom was much stronger, thanks to the growth in influence of the AAUP, the strengthening of tenure, and the development of an professional ethic that colleges were reluctant to oppose. Academic freedom in American higher education, despite all of its critics and doomsayers, has become a powerful, institutionalized force almost universally praised as essential to higher learning. Whether academic freedom is powerful enough to withstand a future wartime crisis of loyalty, or the growing market forces in higher education, remains to be seen.