Stop Censoring Our Fucking Art !!

American Association of University Professors

Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has understood academic freedom to comprise three interlinked elements: the freedom to teach without external interference, the freedom to conduct research without ideological constraint, and the freedom to speak openly and without sanction on matters of institutional policy and on issues of public concern. To defend these freedoms AAUP has long recognized the crucial role of academic tenure and of shared university governance.

More than 200 scholarly and higher-education organizations have endorsed the definitive 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was jointly formulated by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Numerous colleges and universities have integrated its language into their policies. Nevertheless, these principles are challenged almost daily. In Florida this year it was a faculty member’s decision to conduct a controversial in-class communications exercise; in New York an invitation to controversial speakers; and in San Diego the withdrawal of a visiting fellowship for a theological dissident. In many universities, AAUP is fighting administrative efforts to control faculty intellectual property, including patentable inventions and online class materials. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, faculty at public institutions are struggling to protect their legal right to criticize institutional leaders.

But the gravest challenge to academic freedom in the twenty-first century is the now-decades-long erosion of the tenure system and the widespread exploitation and abuse of contingent, especially part-time, faculty. Hired mostly on annual or even class-by-class contracts, and usually paid at rates more similar to casual than professional labor, these faculty members—now constituting over three-quarters of the profession—enjoy little job security and hence often minimal academic freedom, at least where they are not protected by collective-bargaining agreements, now probably the strongest means available to defend freedom in the classroom. Subject to intimidation by supervisors, many contingent faculty members engage in self-censorship, fearful that unconventional views, dissenting opinions, or innovative pedagogies might endanger their livelihoods.

Sadly this trend is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. It thus falls to the AAUP and to all members of the higher-education community to expand the defense of academic freedom—the freedom to teach, to innovate, and to speak out—to include more fully all who are engaged in teaching and research, whether full-time or part-time, tenured or contingent. Maintaining America’s achievements in democratic higher education may well depend on our success.

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