Following up on our interview with Steve Aby, editor of The Academic Bill of Rights: A Handbook, we got a chance to talk with a few of the contributors to the collection.  We begin our series of interviews with Lawrence Poston, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois-Chicago, whose essay in the book is entitled "'The More Things Change'?: Academic Freedom Then and Now" which (obviously) looks at the history of academic freedom.  When we asked him about the current debates around academic freedom, Poston contextualized the current ideological debates within the economics of higher education that most Americans face.

In Illinois, at least, what gets the presses rolling tend to be issues of undergraduate education (e.g., why does my kid at the flagship institution have to sit in an introductory course in psychology with 800 students and never have access to a professor, only a TA?)   Then the time is ripe for extremists with their own political agenda to move in and say, "And look how those professors spend the rest of their time," so that political issues come in on the coat-tails of economic ones.

Read these and other interesting observations in the full interview with Professor Poston below the jump.

Free Exchange: What led you to write about issues of academic freedom?

Poston: For two years I worked as a staff associate in the Washington Office of the AAUP dealing with individual complaints that came in, on a daily basis, over the transom. After awhile I began to realize (some might say I should have realized this earlier) that there was a whole history behind the way the AAUP dealt with these questions -- not  just a matter of AAUP history, but part of a broader narrative about how the American professoriate came to stake out certain claims to self-discipline.

Free Exchange: Why has the issue of academic freedom been so hotly contested within (and outside) the academy?  What recent changes have occurred that keep this issue at the forefront of challenges facing institutions of higher education?

Poston: There are in fact periods of relative benignity, some might say indifference, in which questions of academic freedom tend not to be disputed. When I entered the profession in the early 1960s, I would say that there was a fairly broad and deep element of trust on the part of the public in what universities did for society, as well as a market for newly-hatched PhD's that looked almost limitless. But questions about academic freedom tend to surface at a time when society itself is experiencing serious divisions -- one thinks of Mitchell Palmer and the Red Raids after World War I, the McCarthy period, the Vietnam period, and now the Iraq war, and when these converge with an atmosphere of tight funding, the stakes get even higher.  Universities tend to be targets during periods of controversy and fiscal restraint because, by their nature, and rightly so, they house a dissident element, one that questions fundamental directions in national policy. And it's all the more problematic when some sections of the public, or at least pundits who purport to represent the public, say, "Why should we be funding this?"

Free Exchange: How do you think the campaigns surrounding the Academic Bill of Rights and similar proposals are affecting the actions of Boards of Trustees and other governing bodies?

Poston: I don't really have a national perspective that enables me to answer this question.  I can say that on my own campus, the ABOR has not been a particularly live issue. That doesn't mean that it hasn't been elsewhere, or that it won't surface some day here, but I'm not aware of any strong legislative or Board of Trustees interest at the moment.

Free Exchange: What impact are these campaigns having on the public's perception of higher education?

Poston: I think we have to distinguish between the way we on the campus react to these kinds of issues and the way the public views us.  In Illinois, at least, what gets the presses rolling tend to be issues of undergraduate education (e.g., why does my kid at the flagship institution have to sit in an introductory course in psychology with 800 students and never have access to a professor, only a TA?)   Then the time is ripe for extremists with their own political agenda to move in and say, "And look how those professors spend the rest of their time," so that political issues come in on the coat-tails of economic ones.  If it hasn't happened to as great an extent here as elsewhere, I think it may because by and large, the two political parties tend to be fairly centrist.  As academics, I think we tend to exaggerate the centrality of ideological wars, when the broader public is thinking, "Why are my taxes supporting this?"  Of course, again, I think there's always an element in the commentators that wants to make hay out of the assumed liberalism of university faculties (much exaggerated), but I don't know how deep this view runs in the electorate.

Bear in mind that I'm speaking here as a faculty member at a public institution, which is much more open to complaints about how taxpayer dollars are being spent. I can imagine different kinds of pressures emanating from various sources at other kinds of institutions.

I guess my bottom line on this one is that we tend to overrate ideological disputes and underrate fiscal constraints, which often drive other forms of interrogation into how academics are conducting their business.

Free Exchange: What is the cumulative impact of these campaigns on faculty and students?

Poston: I see very little from where I sit. This may reflect the fact that I teach at a large urban university, where it is the pocketbook issues that dominate.  When it comes, e.g., to students getting involved in surveillance of faculty behavior, most of ours don't have either the time or the political inclination.

Free Exchange: You mention that some feel that educators working for state-funded institutions should be barred from publicly criticizing the institutions or government for which they work. Does this attitude taint the debate surrounding ABOR and its companion proposals?  As this proposal is, on its face, an egregious violation of the First Amendment rights of faculty that wouldn't seem to be able to withstand a court challenge, why do you think it is being proposed?

Poston: The belief that faculty members have no right to criticize institutional policies long antedates the current quarrels over ABOR and other forms of external coercion.  I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not so confident about the outcome of cases based on First Amendment arguments, partly because of the preoccupation of some courts with not intervening in cases that might involve "workplace disharmony." The real problem is that of communicating both to the courts and to the larger public that faculty, by the virtue of their roles as officers of the institution, have a legitimate, and indeed the primary voice in formulating academic policy and in making decisions on faculty appointments that will best forward that policy. Here's where a dollop of historical perspective helps.

Free Exchange: Why do ultra-conservative critics of the academy seem uncomfortable relying on institutional methods of solving disputes, like the Ombudsman? What can be done to re-establish confidence in the university's ability to police itself?

Poston: Frankly, I think we've brought some of this on ourselves.  All of us who have been alert to these issues over the years can think of cases where faculty committees have been reluctant to sanction even the most egregious violations of professional ethics. On the other hand, I can point to plenty of cases in which a dean or a university attorney has been reluctant to bite the bullet and discipline a faculty member even when a faculty committee might have been ready to urge it.  Attorneys worry about lawsuits, and university attorneys in particular would often rather settle than push a case into the courts.  And my guess is that a fair number of such cases are resolved each year through buyouts, early retirements, or some other kind of severance which requires confidentiality. So sometimes an assertion of faculty and institutional responsibility, by its very nature, is not public.

Though I think you mean it only as an aside or a "for instance," I would mention that the ombudsman route is not really appropriate for the kind of faculty-centered issues we're talking about. Ombudsmen have a place in cases where there may be a serious imbalance of power (for example, faculty vs. student, or faculty vs. staff), whereas in academic freedom disputes the issues tend to revolve around members of the faculty and so need to be addressed by an all-faculty committee.  I hope my piece makes it clear, however, that student freedoms can be abridged, too, and where this is the case, an ombudsman approach might under particular circumstances be the most useful one.

When I was at another institution years ago, tenure came under attack, and at a particularly gloomy meeting of a faculty committee that dealt directly with the Board of Trustees, someone raised the question, in grim jest, of whether we should ritually sacrifice one tenured member of the faculty every year to whet the Board's appetite for blood.  There was a long silence, and then someone inquired (with affected innocence), "Does the faculty member have to be a virgin?"  Of course, as all the participants in this discussion realized, the argumentation is absurd. But I do have to say that some conservative critics would not be appeased even by the most readily demonstrable evidence that the faculty was moving to correct any violations of appropriate behavior by members of their own ranks.  From the Far Right point of view, nothing will be satisfactory that doesn't, in effect, compel faculty members to hold their contracts at will, that is, at the total discretion of the employing institution.

Free Exchange: What course of actions should we take to defend academic freedom? What role can different members of the academic community - faculty, students, parents, alumni - play in standing up for these principles?

Poston: As faculty members, we could do much more to demystify issues like academic freedom and tenure and learn how to talk to non-academic audiences. But our first audience for this is not the external public but precisely the groups you mention -- students, parents, and alumni.  How many of us have legislators at our state capitol who we might have had in our classroom?  Perhaps more than we realize.  We have to make clear that this is not just a matter of enabling faculty self-indulgence, but rather that institutional quality depends on the free spirit of inquiry that faculty need to support.  If we make that case well, then I suspect in many instances students or alumni will do a much better job of persuading the broader public than we might.

Free Exchange: Are there any other comments you might want to make that would be of interest to Free Exchange on Campus readers?

Poston: In looking over my answers I fear that what I have said may be misconstrued as invoking a form of economic determinism -- that money drives everything.  Of course it doesn't.  Zealots of all stripes, quite unconcerned with the economic side of things, have always tried to reshape colleges and universities according to their own preferences.  I hope my essay provides a way of looking at some of the historical precedents for today's situation.

Free Exchange: Indeed it does.  Thanks on behalf of our readers for taking the time to answer our questions.