academia

[meganursula]

I have been reading and thinking about the place that academia holds in society recently. I haven't attached many articles in this forum, but i thought some of you might find the following discussion interesting:
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/are-academics-different/#comment-60957

This article questions the existence and extent of Academic Freedom. Tied up in this discussion is the question of whether academics should be guaranteed some rights not guaranteed to, well, everyone else. It is an interesting thing to consider, and i probably also like this author's slant, as well.

Recently i have also read articles questioning how much commercialization is too much for our academic structure to bear? (Is it bad that so much funding comes from interested profit-seeking parties?) And how does the commercialization affect the relative emphases placed on engineering or the humanities? Is the decline in support for non-profitable humanities research a harbinger of the eventual decline of the academic system altogether? If it is, is that bad?

Another question i have seen posed recently is whether performing as an academic has merit in the broader society? Should one feel respected for their place in the collegiate elite? Or should one worry about their lack of contribution to the more pragmatic areas of society? One argument for academic freedom supposes that academics support the development of society in a broader sense, and should then be afforded a special amount of freedom to support their unique contributions. But a more egalitarian view recognizes that a variety of jobs are necessary in society, and that academics are no more or less important than any profession.

I have some opinions about this, as you may imagine. Suffice it to say that i think that academia is not magic, but it is respectable. I'd be interested in hearing what other folks think.

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

My knee jerked when I saw the URL for Fish's blog. He seems to hate academic freedom for some reason, and keeps erecting strawmen and extreme examples (particularly Rancourt) to "prove" his point.

Too busy now, but I'll actually respond later.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I thought that article was more balanced than that. Perhaps i am misreading some of it. Or perhaps you are supportive of an extent of academic freedom that I am not.

Two questions stand out to me - one is whether professors should be afforded special and unique legal rights? The argument for complete academic freedom may suppose that they are, but i see this as a huge legal minefield, as well as problematic for our guarantees to the general populace.

The other question is how far professors can go in disregarding the demands of their employing academies? Complete academic freedom might suggest that one has no duty to comply with university requests or regulations, but i think that this does not allow for the practical aspects of fulfilling the academic code, which requires not only thought, but also the communication of that thought to others. Pragmatically, i think universities should be able to have some recourse to enforce requirements on their employees, and it is a matter of trying to draw lines in a fuzzy area.

.... must get back to reviewing paper.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Universities write contracts that guarantee academic freedom, either because they're top schools and that's one of the many things you need to do to be a top school, or because they'd like to be, or because the school was founded by people who believed in it and it was never removed, or because the union forced them. Same goes for tenure. Neither is as much a "special and unique legal right" as it is "a line in the contract."

Modern governments have found that certain activities that are against an employer's interest are in the social interest. Therefore, we get (oft-ignored, especially in the US) protections for would-be union organizers, and protections for whistleblowers. The US government (at least, according to Fish's case law readings) generally does not seem to have found that academic freedom needs special protections. I suspect that this is in part because the concept is in the contracts.

When the USDA and OSU forced one of its faculty and his student to stop publishing a USDA-funded study that made the USDA look bad, there was a huge uproar. OSU got its wish: it couldn't do anything to the faculty member, but the student hadn't signed anything guaranteeing him academic freedom. But it also got lots of egg on its face, and the result got out anyway (without the details). This is what academic freedom is about.


In the Rancourt affair, the question is whether Rancourt has violated his contract; if not, then it's a wrongful dismissal. I asked my dad for his opinion, which would be more learned than mine (he's been president of the faculty union, and of the provincial union of faculty unions), but he was busy taking my mom out to a birthday dinner. My opinion is that Rancourt's activities are probably not grounds for dismissal; I wouldn't at all be surprised to see the UofO losing in a lawsuit. Fish's readings in US case law are, of course, totally irrelevant to this case. Not only that, he is referring to cases mostly about subpoenas by companies of university researchers, which is not at all what's going on in the Rancourt case.

Fish seems to think that you can't brook any insubordination or else the entire faculty will start behaving like raving lunatics. He gives no evidence to back this up except for the case of Rancourt.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

I do find the examples of insubordination to be very extreme - most academics i know do their best to work within the constraints of their institution. As with so many things, though, i think it comes down to lines - where do you draw the line on behaviors? If it is too stringent you risk limiting honest academic inquiry, if it is too loose you end up with a professorial class that can act outside of society.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

At tenure, profs can be fired for poor teaching or poor research. After tenure, they can be fired for gross abuses like not showing up, or sexual harassment. Absent evidence to the contrary, I believe this is sufficient. How much damage is Rancourt really doing? How many faculty members are Rancourts? Is avoiding this worth a change in policy? Not to mention it may well be that he *did* violate existing policy, in which case there's no reason to change anything.

Note that most fields of employment never perform the check that faculty perform at the tenure case. Incompetants can stick around forever, just because it's often easier to ignore them than to fire them. This occurs with staff at unversities also (many secretaries are amazingly wonderful, but some, let's just say they aren't).