In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Why and How Is Academic Freedom Important for Ethnic Studies?
  • David Palumbo-Liu (bio)

Rather than use this space to venture into large philosophical questions about academic freedom or repeat commonly understood points about the topic, I want to use this opportunity simply to highlight some key points regarding academic freedom’s particular import with regard to ethnic studies.

But before we get to ethnic studies, we need to be clear about what we actually mean by “academic freedom.” Academic freedom is composed of things besides freedom of speech and expression. Freedom of speech does us no good if the conditions under which we exercise this freedom weigh against its use. For example, graduate students, and even more so contingent labor, may self-censor because their working conditions or careers may be threatened by nonsupport or nonrenewal should they appear to be causing “divisiveness” or discord. The same is true to some degree for tenure-track professors.

Another example of how the material conditions for academic freedom influence its exercise is found in the Salaita case, which sent us warnings well beyond the issue of Israel-Palestine. With the evaporation of federal support for research and the “re-prioritizing” of state budgets, university and college administrators are even more fearful of losing wealthy donors, and the bedrock value of deliberative and democratic faculty governance is now set aside in favor of corporate efficiencies and control. Therefore the very work of ethnic studies may be compromised because its potential for disruption might well decrease its chances for funding, and this again reduces its capacity to fully realize it academic freedom. [End Page 101]

The case of Steven Salaita had as an essential element the fact that he was appointed to a program in American Indian studies. Ethnic studies is particularly vulnerable to denials of or infringements upon academic freedom not only because the kinds of knowledge it generates are considered peripheral to the core mission of the university, but also because its modality of opposition and contestation wins it no friends among most administrators. This has both material and ideological causes and effects.

As we all know, ethnic studies emerged alongside movements for social justice. The very appearance of ethnic studies in the academy was part of an effort to make use of the educational apparatuses—to train students to be able to understand suppressed and distorted histories, to identify the workings of ideology that impeded justice and equity and self-determination. Absolutely none of these values stands above the normative education the university is organized and funded to deliver, especially these days. And the threats posed by expressions of protest, contestation, disruption, agitation are handled in many ways short of outright suppression. Programs can be quietly defunded, placed further and further down the list of priorities, merged with unlikely partners to be chaperoned into proper behavior.

The entire Salaita case may well have looked much different had he been appointed in English or history.

Along with the fact that our subject areas are still considered marginal is the material fact that our numbers are small. Therefore building a critical mass of graduate students, contingent faculty, and tenure-track faculty working in ethnic studies to defend their working conditions and protect their academic freedom is extremely difficult. Even finding members of the senior faculty to stand in solidarity is often hard because of inbred hierarchies. Only work within and without departments and programs can begin to ameliorate the suppression of academic freedom for this group of scholars.

It is absolutely imperative to note that it was only because the wrongs done to Steven Salaita extended well beyond safeguarding his right—in his Twitter feed—to criticize Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza and into the realm of faculty governance that forty-some academic units at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rose to complain, and the American Association of University Professors and other academic organizations did as well.

There is the solidarity borne of a sensitivity toward ethics and empathy; there is also a solidarity borne of self-interest. The two are of course not mutually exclusive. But they can be. The warning that we must heed with regard to...

pdf

Share