The Academic Guild: Self Criticism and Self Evaluation

29 THE ACADEMIC GUILD: SELF CRITICISM AND SELF EVALUATION* Robert Berdahl State University of New York— Buffalo As one who has spent his professional life examining the relations be­ tween universities and colleges on the one hand and various levels of govern­ ment on the other, I offer the following thoughts with no pretense of having been a student of academic guilds. Nevertheless, the combination of my per­ sonal instincts based on twenty years in academic life, my assessment of pos­ sible developments in the attitudes of governmental figures towards Academe, and the challenge to try to avoid trivia in this first presidential address-all these embolden me to tackle this rather big topic. Academic ethics has been much discussed in recent days by both AAHE and Carnegie Council sessions. But my emphases are somewhat different and these remarks are specifically directed to the constituency of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. If I am at all correct in my diagnosis, the greatest friends of the aca­ demic profession may well turn out to be its own constructive critics rather than its more militant partisan boosters. Here I should make it clear that when I refer to the academic guild and its freedoms, I mean to include the whole panoply of Academe, from the individual professor on a campus to a statewide governing board of higher education— in other words, any indivi­ duals or organizations who receive or claim special status because of their links with the higher learning. In the case of the individual scholar, we call this special relationship academic freedom; in the case of campus or multi-campus governing boards, we speak of corporate autonomy. The two con­ cepts are obviously related, but, as I have elsewhere (1971) argued, quoting Eric Ashby, they are not synonymous: Prussian scholars enjoyed academic freedom in non-autonomous early-19th century institutions, and autonomous Oxford and Cambridge universities during that same century themselves denied academic freedom in certain ways to their scholars. The point I wish to stress today, however, is not their differences but their common element of a certain degree of exemption from normal standards of accountability. Because of this common exemption, I am urging that indi­ viduals enjoying academic freedom and institutions enjoying corporate auto­ nomy have a special obligation to monitor their own academic integrity through self-criticism and self-evaluation. In these days when philistine voices are raising increasingly hostile questions about higher education and its costs and special privileges, it might seem like a counsel of folly to feed fuel to their fires by furnishing searching criticisms from within. Clark Kerr yesterday made the important point of the need for higher education critics to keep things in perspective: there is much more right with Academe than wrong with it. But there are also questions being raised by other thoughtful persons about precious academic protections such as tenure, and intimate institutional dimensions, such as evaluation of performance or--hated word--"outputs"! There are those who would insist that such cherished aspects of Academe are not to be tampered with by those who do not understand and love the Aca­ demy; but there is a consequent need to follow through on the implied con­ tract. Those of us who do feel that we understand— and yes, even love— Academe must bring our best minds to bear on some of these innermost aspects of our professional life, must suggest even sensitive reforms where needed, and only then confront the doubting external elements with carefully reasoned rebuttals of their ideas, where these have been found to be inappropriate. ♦President's Address presented to the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 19, 1979. 30 Here, I hope, is the relevance to ASHE of the highly personal odyssey to follow. If you, the members, and future officers find any merit in these ideas, there might emerge a working agenda for future actions by either indi­ vidual scholars or even an occasional working party of this organization. ASHE cannot go chasing every passing rabbit but if I am right, the following issues are among the bigger rabbits! It is perhaps ironic that your Presi...