Freedom of Speech in Administration

In this post to his "Confessions of a Community College Dean" blog on Inside Higher Ed, "Dean Dad," expresses confusion by some of the issues raised by UC Irvine Law School dean "hiring, then non-hiring, then hiring." (See, also, Chemerinsky and Irvine: What Happened? by Jon Weiner.)

Faculty are supposed – rightly – to have considerable leeway in expressing views on controversial issues. In the classroom, that’s supposed to be restricted to topics that are relevant to the course, though in practice most of us give “relevant” a pretty loose reading. Outside of the classroom, the standard freedom of speech protections are supposed to apply. The idea is that educators have to be free to follow their inquiries to what appears to them to be truth, even if that truth is unpopular or even silly. Given the speed with which popular opinion can change – those of us who opposed the Iraq war even before it started have gone from ‘hippies’ and ‘paleo-liberals’ to ‘prescient’ in just a few short years – and given the stubborn tenacity of truth, the policy of shielding good-faith inquiry from political interference strikes me as wise.

(I don’t buy the usual argument that tenure is a prerequisite for academic freedom, but that’s another post altogether. There’s also another set of issues around academic freedom at denominational colleges, but I’ll just confess being out of my element there.)

If academic freedom, broadly conceived, is a prerequisite for the pursuit of truth, then it seems to me that one of two conclusions must follow: either administrators have academic freedom too, or administrators aren’t supposed to be bound to the truth.

I prefer the first option.