Although I happily toil as a midlevel bureaucrat at the University of Georgia, I have been fortunate to have published several articles, and an essay, in several professional publications. My field is information technology, and my publications focused on that topic.
As my professional horizons expanded, I became more interested in organizational design, organizational cultural development, and leadership. It was the publication of one such article, “The Sirens of Business Thinking,” that prompted me to think about academic freedom for campus administrators. My article debunked what I believe to be an overapplication of business practices in the public sector, a position of mine that runs counter to the views of my superiors, many of whom are steadfast in their belief that the University of Georgia should be run “like a business.”
After the article was published, I experienced no negative repercussions. But it got me thinking: What if I had? I work at a university where academic freedom is held in high regard, but every policy reference I could find clearly granted the privilege of academic freedom to faculty members. There were no mentions of administrators.
I did not feel threatened by expressing my opinions in the article. I just felt somewhat unprotected and exposed. The more I pondered the topic of academic freedom for the administrative scholar, the more I believed that I, as an administrator, should have as much right as a faculty member to contribute to the intellectual corpus with no fear of retribution.
I began the process of seeking the answer to this question: Does the administrative scholar have the expectation, right, or privilege of academic freedom?
I initially posed the question to faculty friends, to the American Association of University Professors, and even to a reporter at The Chronicle. The answer I received was consistently the same, and best summed up Robin Wilson, the reporter: “It seems to me that staff members do not earn tenure and do not have the protections of tenure or academic freedom.”
I had always understood that academic freedom was associated with job security; however, and forgive my naïveté, I was disappointed to learn that academic freedom was inexorably tied to tenure. Before that revelation, I had always thought of academic freedom as a principle complemented by tenure, not contingent upon it. I also believe that a contingent principle is a compromised principle, and a compromised principle is a weakened one.
I brought my dismay to a co-worker and friend, B. Lewis Noles, a historian and trained archivist. He encouraged me to “begin from the beginning” and loaned me a book, The American College and University: A History by Frederick Rudolph (University of Georgia Press, 1990). A chapter called “Academic Man” details the beginnings of academic freedom in the United States.
Rudolph presents a litany of cases in the 1890s and early 1900s in which professors, and even college presidents, were dismissed for expressing their views on free trade, coolie labor, and monopolies. “Economic nonconformity was the great and abiding sin of the professors who were involved in these key cases of academic freedom,” says Rudolph.
“Out of these cases emerged the principles of American academic freedom, Rudolph writes, “and to these principles in the early decades of the 20th century were added principles of academic tenure, the terms of professional office, that would safeguard both the principles of academic freedom and the professor at this work.” Then, in 1915, the AAUP was established, and “now the organization man, university model, had an organization to protect him from the organization itself, to sustain him in as noble an endeavor as man had ever assumed—the pursuit of truth, the conquest of ignorance.”
Buoyed by that historical context, I found renewed significance for my position in a discussion I had with Janet Frick, an associate professor of psychology at Georgia. “I think of academic freedom as a ‘spirit of intellectual inquiry’ and a position that allows and even encourages paradigm shifting and pursuit of radical ideas,” she said. “But it’s also part of my job requirement to produce ideas, knowledge, research, etc. It is important to remember that it’s tenure, not academic freedom, that keeps me from getting fired if I pursue a controversial or unpopular line of research.”
Her comments raised a question in my mind: Is it a part of my job responsibilities to produce ideas, knowledge, and research? In my case, it is. I am asked by my supervisors to demonstrate “national administrative visibility” regarding information technology to the higher-education community. Regardless of an explicit requirement, it is an implication of membership in the academic community that its members have a responsibility, and a right, to contribute to the intellectual corpus of their time.
Faculty members who criticize their institutions publicly are usually protected by academic freedom, and I believe the same should be true of administrators. Just as a faculty member should obey rules of reasonable engagement—attempt to effect positive change through proper channels, provide evidence and facts, and avoid libelous or slanderous remarks—the administrative scholar should be allowed the same privilege of open criticism. Neither group has the privilege of public criticism without cause and justification.
I am opposed to the notion that academic freedom is the eminent domain of tenured professors. Academic freedom protects the rights of scholars, regardless of their roles, to communicate ideas and facts without fear of punishment, and it is wrong to assume that only the tenured are “allowed the pursuit of truth, the conquest of ignorance.”
It is time to rethink the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure to be more inclusive, removing the direct correlation between academic freedom and tenure. That is even more important today—not just for the administrative scholar, but for the traditional scholar. The erosion of tenure is becoming an increasing concern, summed up well by Bill Tierney in his article “Academic Freedom and Tenure, Again (Part II),” which appeared in the January 2010 issue of 21st Century Scholar. Tierney wrote, “the erosion of tenure means the erosion of academic freedom.”
All members of the academic community should be granted the intellectual sanctuary of academic freedom to ensure the free and universal exchange of ideas.
