Question 1: The concept of academic freedom held by faculty and academic administrators may often be different. Based upon a review of the literature, analyze the concept of academic freedom and how it affects institutional operations and faculty relations.
The author explores the concept of academic freedom in American educational institutions, focusing on legal applications from 1915 (when the first formal definition was established) to the present. Topics addressed in this paper include the concept's inherent tensions among the competing interests of institutions, educators, students, and government overseers in controlling classroom instructional content. A review of case law and the current literature reveals that for students and teachers, the concept of academic freedom is restrained by administrative and political decisions on the part of educational and governmental institutions.
In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described the four essential freedoms of a university as the right to determine who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study. Justice Frankfurter made it clear that these were the university's freedomsùnot those of students or professors. Here I will review the literature on academic freedom and show how the exercising of institutional rights often overrides or restricts the academic freedoms of faculty and students. At the center of this debate is how state and federal courts have balanced the rights of educational institutions to guide teaching and learning on their campuses with the rights of students, instructors, and other employees.
In 1915, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In that document, AAUP founder Arthur Lovejoy offered a definition that might be seen as conflicting with Frankfurter's assumption...