It’s Been More Than 50 Years Since the AAUP Revised Its Statement on Academic Freedom

I am a lifetime member of the American Association of University Professors. It is an organization that has done remarkable work in defending academic freedom for people who teach in this nation’s colleges and universities.

But as I contemplate returning to teaching this fall, I worry that the AAUP’s understanding of academic freedom is dangerously behind the times. The AAUP’s understanding of academic freedom urgently needs updating to take account of dangers that could not have been contemplated in 1940 when its statement on academic freedom was issued.

It is time for the organization to think anew about what academic freedom means and what must be done to protect it in an era when the federal government and some state governments are seeking to curtail it. We can understand why its failure to do has been problematic by taking a look at lawsuits filed by the AAUP and its campus-based chapters at universities that have been attacked by the Trump administration.

But before looking at those suits, let me say a bit about the 1940 statement.

The AAUP tells the story of its “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” this way: “In 1915 the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure of the American Association of University Professors formulated a statement of principles on academic freedom and academic tenure known as the 1915 Declaration of Principles … In 1940 … representatives of the American Association of University Professors and of the Association of American Colleges agreed on a restatement of the principles. This restatement is known to the profession as the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.”

Thirty years later, the AAUP considered updating the 1940 statement but ultimately decided not to undertake a wholesale revision. Instead, it added a series of “Interpretive Comments” to the existing document. Those comments, the AAUP explains, were intended to update the document in light of “the experience gained in implementing and applying it for over thirty years and of adapting it to current needs.”

This history reminds us that the thinking guiding that statement goes back more than a century, to a time when the modern university was just taking shape. As Yale Law School professor Robert Post notes, “The American concept of academic freedom was forged early in the 20th century. It emerged from struggles between the newly professionalizing American professoriate and the governmental, business, and parochial powers that controlled American universities.”

And it has been more than half a century since the AAUP’s influential statement on academic freedom was refreshed at all.

The 1940 statement imagined that the main threat to the “full freedom” in research, teaching and extramural speech would come “from institutional censorship or discipline.” The statement was, in that sense, addressed not just to teachers and scholars, but to university administrators.

That is why if they do not follow the principles laid out in the AAUP statement, they can be subjected to censure. As the AAUP explains it, censure is reserved for institutions “that, as evidenced by a past violation … are not observing the generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure approved by this Association.”

I searched the censure list, looking for the Trump administration. Alas, it was nowhere to be found.

Not surprising, because by the AAUP’s standards, the Trump administration cannot violate academic freedom except indirectly by pressuring higher educational institutions to do so on its behalf.

To be fair, the AAUP has not been silent about what the administration has done since Jan. 20. In February, it joined a suit seeking to prevent the Trump administration “from using federal grants and contracts as leverage to force colleges and universities to end all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, whether federally funded or not, and from terminating any ‘equity-related’ federal grants or contracts.”

In March, it sued the Trump administration for “unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research in an attempt to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence.” As the AAUP noted, “This move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning. “

But here again, consonant with its existing approach to academic freedom, the focus was on what Columbia would do to its faculty.

Also in March, the AAUP joined a lawsuit “seeking to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities.” But note, the primary claim is about freedom of speech, not academic freedom.

In April, the AAUP and its chapter at Harvard University sued “to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech and restructure its core operations or else face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals.”

Like the suit brought on behalf of Columbia University, it focused on what Harvard might do to restrict the academic freedom of those who teach and do research there.

In one sense, this is a remarkable record for which the AAUP deserves enormous credit. But, as I pointed out in January, there are new threats to individual faculty members “to intimidate them into silence,” as Darrell M. West put it. It is time that the AAUP acknowledged them in its foundational statement on academic freedom.

Protecting academic freedom now requires that colleges and universities not only refrain from abridging it themselves but that they take measures to protect and support members of their faculties in the face of governmental or other external threats targeting them directly. The AAUP should revise its 1940 statement to make clear that higher education institutions have an affirmative obligation to advance and protect academic freedom. Doing so would encourage recognition of academic freedom as a positive good in which the universities and their faculties have a joint interest.

For colleges and universities, implementing that affirmative obligation requires, among other things, that they stand ready to provide legal assistance, make public statements of support and offer help in devising crisis communication strategies for faculty whose freedom in research, in teaching or in their use of academic expertise as citizens is threatened or abridged by external forces.

That’s a big ask.

It calls on universities to provide resources, spend reputational capital and stand behind faculty whose views administrators might not share. The university, in this new understanding, has to put itself more at risk to promote and protect academic freedom.

Universities won’t do this easily, which is why the AAUP would play such an important role in advancing this goal. Redrafting the 1940 statement is a good place to start.

As the history of its current statement suggests, the AAUP does not move easily or quickly to reconsider its principles. But the need is great, and the time for action is here. By meeting the challenge of the moment, the AAUP will once again demonstrate its essential role in the world of American higher education.