This is very good news for faculty there (especially given recent academic freedom violations), and I hope it signals broader adoptions of the Kalven Report.
Harry Kalven, the author of the report, was a preeminent First Amendment scholar, who had a deep understanding of academic freedom (see an earlier discussion at my law school blog). Twenty years ago, long before I was at Chicago or even knew of the Kalven Report, I recall writing to the chemist Larry Faulkner, then the President of the University of Texas at Austin, criticizing him for his public critique of a UT Austin professor's remarks about 9/11. President Faulkner responded courteously, although he disagreed. His political judgment may have been sound--in an ass-backwards state like Texas with an excellent university dependent on public support, the President may have needed to say something. But from an academic freedom standpoint, this was a failure: Presidents, Provosts, Deans, and Chairs are to be "seen and not heard," unless they are speaking about university business. I have written before about this at CHE, but the basic rule when complaints come in about "Professor X said Y" should be: "Individual faculty have the right to express their views on matters of public interest, and they speak for themselves not the institution." Period. That's it. No apologies or explanations.
Universities exist to produce and disseminate knowledge. Individual faculty, under existing academic freedom principles, may disseminate their knowledge, and may do so in terms that are offensive to the public at large. But the University, and all its constituent entities (colleges, departments etc.) should be silent. The Department of English, like the Department of Philosophy and the Business School and the Law School, are administrative entities that exist to support the research and teaching of scholars in their disciplines. They do not exist to take positions on the political issues du jour, whether it is abortion or Trump or systemic racism or the illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
The Kalven Report, in one way, preserves what is wonderful about the "Ivory Tower": we are here to develop and share knowledge about the physical and social world in accordance with the disciplinary techniques we have learned. The University does not exist as a pontificating entity alongside the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Academic freedom protects the right of individual faculty to express their views on matters of public interest without sanction. That is a precious right, that universities should not take for granted.
The foundational principles of academic freedom, which are essentially Millian principles, are going to come under increasing pressure as the United States heads in the authoritarian, Hungarian direction. If universities are just political entities, then defending their autonomy will become harder than it already is.
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