Some Notes on Academic Freedom
I’ve been writing about jawboning and free expression law for half a dozen years, and was on the receiving end of real-world state pressure to remove user speech from Google’s platforms for a decade before that. The longer I’ve thought about it, the less certain I’ve become about the right legal rules to protect users’ rights in jawboning situations.
Post goes through some examples that show this tension, such as the fact that self-censorship and the censorship of our peers is not only not incompatible with academic freedom but is the mechanism through which the disciplinary standards that allow the production of knowledge are upheld; or—for example—that teachers cannot choose to talk about anything in their classes (they are limited by the discipline, by the curriculum, by the program). It is possible to imagine others, such as the fact that students have obligations that force them to express themselves, prohibit them from doing so in certain circumstances (speaking in class), in relation to certain topics (they are bound by the premises of the exams), etc. Academic life involves participating in a social practice ordered by different roles, little similar to the binomial representatives y represented around which the vision that links freedom of expression with political life is structured, and which makes up the essence of comparative jurisprudence on it.
If they are different things, then we need to reaffirm what academic freedom is. It is useful to recall basic principles that have been upheld for more than a hundred years by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the main association of university professors in the United States. These principles hold that academic freedom encompasses three freedoms: the freedom to research, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to express oneself outside the university. From my conversations with local professors, it emerges that the current crisis affects all three dimensions, and that it may be due to various causes: the emergence of the safetysm As a predominant approach to spaces of academic discussion, the natural desire to please others generates dynamics of complacency in teachers (socialized in thought) of the department and their superiors), the low commitment of university authorities to support shocking or disturbing points of view, their vulnerability to external pressures, etc.
Undoubtedly, the hearings of the US Congress committee that investigated—among other things—the reactions of university authorities to the protests that arose after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war contributed to worsening the situation. The trigger for this was the public hearings to which they went subjected university authorities by a handful of House representatives in December 2023. The hearings occurred in a hostile environment, and the basic defense of principles of academic freedom cost the presidents of Harvard and Pennsylvania their jobs. When months later Columbia President Minouche Shafik testified, her deferential and obsequious stance to an inquisitorial legislative procedure with McCarthyist overtones ended up costing her her job. The combination of informal legislative pressure and pressure exerted through the boards of directors resulted in presidents being ejected from their posts and revealed that the main universities in the United States have very limited autonomy.
In short, the problems of the university system in the United States seem to be related to a growing intervention of the State (at the provincial level, starting in 1998). leyes (universities that seek to influence what universities—especially public ones—do or fail to do), university authorities with little courage, professors who censor themselves, students with a censorious spirit and a certain exclusionary culture that is incompatible with academic activity. Do we have any of these problems in Latin America? What is happening in Argentina in the face of the current budgetary crisis of the university system? A quick and relatively correct answer is no: the State does not get involved in programs or study plans, university authorities enjoy a relatively high degree of autonomy—their autonomy is, in fact, one of the great achievements of the university system. university reform which has been in force for more than a hundred years and deserves some updating—, teachers do not censor themselves excessively (outside of self-censorship required to participate in a discipline that produces knowledge), students do not demand safe spaces nor do they seem to fear different ideas or demand the expulsion of teachers they do not like.
And yet there are some warning signs. We are not dealing with censorious, easily offended students. But sometimes it seems we are dealing with apathetic or disinterested students. We are not dealing with cowardly authorities, but neither are we dealing with reformist ones—the University is a huge institution, moving slowly and inertially. The political economy of the University runs along radically different channels than in the United States: it is not about pressure from private donors, nor the possibility of targeted regulations affecting the ways in which funds are spent. endowments, but rather from current budget discussions. The transmission of knowledge is structurally separated from the production of new knowledge (because Conicet operates independently). And while this year has shown a active university movement to act in self-defense, a renewal agenda is not yet in sight. And it would be necessary, because the crisis of the University is global and is linked to the general crisis of other institutions. of trust like the press or political parties, which explains why the current Argentine government—in a clear populist move—chooses them as its enemy. Academic freedom should be a great shield of defense against such attacks.
Some Notes on Academic Freedom
Last week I participated in a panel on academic freedom at the Global Free Speech Summit, convened by the project The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University. The topic is especially interesting because of the events on the campuses of dozens of US universities in the past year, which revived a old tradition of protest and contentious politics in universities and which revealed, surprisingly, that academic freedom is a slippery concept. To prepare myself, I returned to what I consider to be the best exposition of the matter: Democracy, expertise, and academic freedom: a First Amendment jurisprudence for the modern state, Robert Post (personal hero and friend of CELE). I am not going to summarize the argument of the book here, because it is complex and would oversimplify it. But if I had to do so, I would do it like this: academic freedom is a principle related to freedom of expression, but distinct from it. While freedom of expression in its individual dimension seeks to safeguard the right of every citizen to influence public opinion, academic freedom seeks to protect two social practices organized institutionally around the university: transmitting existing knowledge and generating new knowledge. The traditional doctrine on freedom of expression has little to do with the conditions necessary for these functions to be fulfilled.
Post goes through some examples that show this tension, such as the fact that self-censorship and the censorship of our peers is not only not incompatible with academic freedom but is the mechanism through which the disciplinary standards that allow the production of knowledge are upheld; or—for example—that teachers cannot choose to talk about anything in their classes (they are limited by the discipline, by the curriculum, by the program). It is possible to imagine others, such as the fact that students have obligations that force them to express themselves, prohibit them from doing so in certain circumstances (speaking in class), in relation to certain topics (they are bound by the premises of the exams), etc. Academic life involves participating in a social practice ordered by different roles, little similar to the binomial representatives y represented around which the vision that links freedom of expression with political life is structured, and which makes up the essence of comparative jurisprudence on it.
If they are different things, then we need to reaffirm what academic freedom is. It is useful to recall basic principles that have been upheld for more than a hundred years by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the main association of university professors in the United States. These principles hold that academic freedom encompasses three freedoms: the freedom to research, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to express oneself outside the university. From my conversations with local professors, it emerges that the current crisis affects all three dimensions, and that it may be due to various causes: the emergence of the safetysm As a predominant approach to spaces of academic discussion, the natural desire to please others generates dynamics of complacency in teachers (socialized in thought) of the department and their superiors), the low commitment of university authorities to support shocking or disturbing points of view, their vulnerability to external pressures, etc.
Undoubtedly, the hearings of the US Congress committee that investigated—among other things—the reactions of university authorities to the protests that arose after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war contributed to worsening the situation. The trigger for this was the public hearings to which they went subjected university authorities by a handful of House representatives in December 2023. The hearings occurred in a hostile environment, and the basic defense of principles of academic freedom cost the presidents of Harvard and Pennsylvania their jobs. When months later Columbia President Minouche Shafik testified, her deferential and obsequious stance to an inquisitorial legislative procedure with McCarthyist overtones ended up costing her her job. The combination of informal legislative pressure and pressure exerted through the boards of directors resulted in presidents being ejected from their posts and revealed that the main universities in the United States have very limited autonomy.
In short, the problems of the university system in the United States seem to be related to a growing intervention of the State (at the provincial level, starting in 1998). leyes (universities that seek to influence what universities—especially public ones—do or fail to do), university authorities with little courage, professors who censor themselves, students with a censorious spirit and a certain exclusionary culture that is incompatible with academic activity. Do we have any of these problems in Latin America? What is happening in Argentina in the face of the current budgetary crisis of the university system? A quick and relatively correct answer is no: the State does not get involved in programs or study plans, university authorities enjoy a relatively high degree of autonomy—their autonomy is, in fact, one of the great achievements of the university system. university reform which has been in force for more than a hundred years and deserves some updating—, teachers do not censor themselves excessively (outside of self-censorship required to participate in a discipline that produces knowledge), students do not demand safe spaces nor do they seem to fear different ideas or demand the expulsion of teachers they do not like.
And yet there are some warning signs. We are not dealing with censorious, easily offended students. But sometimes it seems we are dealing with apathetic or disinterested students. We are not dealing with cowardly authorities, but neither are we dealing with reformist ones—the University is a huge institution, moving slowly and inertially. The political economy of the University runs along radically different channels than in the United States: it is not about pressure from private donors, nor the possibility of targeted regulations affecting the ways in which funds are spent. endowments, but rather from current budget discussions. The transmission of knowledge is structurally separated from the production of new knowledge (because Conicet operates independently). And while this year has shown a active university movement to act in self-defense, a renewal agenda is not yet in sight. And it would be necessary, because the crisis of the University is global and is linked to the general crisis of other institutions. of trust like the press or political parties, which explains why the current Argentine government—in a clear populist move—chooses them as its enemy. Academic freedom should be a great shield of defense against such attacks.
