Free Inquiry and Academic Freedom: A Panel Discussion among Academic Leaders

Robert M. Berdahl, Hanna Holborn Gray, Bob Kerrey, Anthony Marx, Charles M. Vest, and Joseph Westphal Free Inquiry and Academic Freedom: A Panel Discussion among Academic Leaders k e r r e y I was asked earlier, when we had quite a good conversation— and I hope it can take off in the direction we were going, and without necessarily responding to my question—to start with a general ques­ tion. So I’ll just give you a general question: During your time as presi­ dent of the university, did you experience issues relating to academic freedom having to with corporations, having to do with the govern­ ment, having to do with political concerns inside your university, and if so, could you talk about them? b e r d a h l : I spent the last portion of my academic career as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. There’s probably no institu­ tion in the country that has had more of a tradition of some contro­ versy revolving around issues of academic freedom and free speech than has the University of California, Berkeley, beginning in 1950-1951, social research Vol 76 : No 2 : Summer 20 0 9 731 with the loyalty oath controversy that broiled around the campus for some period of time; and then the Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s, which was really the beginning of the student movement in the 1960s. So the issues of academic freedom and of free speech have been a part of that campus for some time. I would begin by saying that I think those issues are frequently confused. The notion that academic freedom has its roots in the First Amendment is, I think, not really a very apt description of how and why we have issue of academic free­ dom, because academic freedom is constrained in many ways by our universities. Faculty are not necessarily free to take any position they choose, free of judgment about that position. In their academic disci­ plines they are obviously subjected to very strenuous kinds of evalu­ ations and judgments about positions that they take. So I don’t know that academic freedom and freedom of speech are synonymous or that they have their roots in the same kinds of principles. I thought I would give ju st two examples that arose while I was chancellor at Berkeley and talk about how we threaded our way through them. The first had to do with a graduate student, and the questions of whether or not the issues of academic freedom extend to graduate students who are also teaching assistants. At Berkeley, once graduate students in the English department are advanced to candi­ dacy, they are free to teach a freshman writing course on a subject of their choosing, ostensibly with the approval of the department. But it becomes a seminar on a topic related the graduate student’s research and that will also give students an opportunity to write and have his or her writing evaluated and improved. Since the advent of the web, students simply began posting the courses that they were going to teach, and they didn’t get the review that they did when we had a print version of course offerings. The first any of us heard of this case was when it was reported in the Wall StreetJournal that a graduate student, who was a member of the Palestinian movement on campus, was going to teach a course in Palestinian poetry, liberation poetry. And he posted this on the web. And what caught the attention of the Wall StreetJournal and what 732 social research unfortunately had not caught the attention of the English department, was that he concluded his course description by saying, “Conservative students would be advised to enroll in other classes.” That of course was an outrageous limitation, an unacceptable limitation to impose upon this. But of course the material of the class, and the fact that it was being taught by a graduate student, brought forth a very substantial contro­ versy on campus. The regents became involved. The Jewish community concerned about the pro-Palestinian position that this course developed became involved. The question...