Civility and Academic Life

Abstract

The notion of academic freedom captures several distinct claims. It asserts that academic peers are best placed to judge scholarly competence and accordingly that on all such professional matters they should be granted autonomy. This component of academic freedom is designed to preempt extrascholarly considerations from tainting employment decisions. Beyond the right to professional autonomy, academic freedom also asserts that pursuit of the life of the mind requires complete liberty of thought. Insofar as the academic community is devoted to the discovery of truth, its mission cannot be realized, as every reader of John Stuart Mill knows, if barriers restrict the mind from meandering down paths of inquiry less traveled. The right of an academic to liberty of thought additionally means that outside the professional setting, scholars should enjoy the ordinary rights of a democratic citizen to speak their minds and accordingly that extramural utterances should not bear on the assessment of professional competence. Historically, the great battles over academic freedom in the United States were fought first to free university life from the hold of clerical bias (sponsored by private denominations, American colleges were originally the “ward of religion”), then economic bias (in particular, corporate interference),¹ and then political bias (the periodic Red Scares climaxing in McCarthyism [Schrecker]).

If a man utters a downright lie or commits a daylight robbery or a murder, am I to call this brother of mine, as he most assuredly is, a liar or a thief or a murderer, or am I to use Churchillian language and say “he perambulates round the suburbs of veracity.” Or “he helps himself to the goods that do not belong to him without perhaps any intention of stealing,” or “he spills innocent blood, though perhaps he does not want to kill”? And if I were to use such circumlocutory speech, is there the slightest guarantee that I shall never hurt the party of whom I may be speaking? Harsh truth may be uttered courteously and gently, but the words would read hard. To be truthful you must call a liar a liar—a harsh word perhaps, but the use is inevitable.

—Mahatma Gandhi (346–47)