Academic Freedom and Antiwar Dissent in a Democratic Idiom

Academic freedom, as conceptualized by John Dewey, entailed not only the principle of unfettered intellectual inquiry but also the equally important, but often overlooked, expectation of artful communication. Both the principle and the expectation were grounded in the argument that academic freedom is legitimized as an investment in democracy. The development of a great democratic community depends not only on unfettered social inquiry but also the full and moving public communication of intellectual insights and innovations. Consistent with Dewey's vision, and drawing on Michel de Certeau, this paper examines academic freedom as a form of political dissent and mode of resisting governing orthodoxies, that is, as a tactic or set of tactics for speaking in the democratic idiom. It draws on the examples of David Horowitz and Ward Churchill to caution against tactics of reverse recrimination that render dissenting speech strategically vulnerable to ruling frames of interpretation.