higher institutions of learning to investigate and discuss the problems of his science and to express his conclusions, whether through publication or the instruction of students, without interference from political or ecclesiastical authority, or from the administrative officials of the institution in which he is employed, unless his methods are found by qualified bodies of his own profession to be clearly incompetent or contrary to professional ethics (Weidner, 2003, p. 445).
The faculty members who drafted the Declaration thought the university as an entity should be a nonpartisan community detached from the political struggles of the outside world. They believed that individual professors should be able to express their opinions freely on controversial subjects while academic institutions should observe a strict neutrality toward all political, economic and social issues (Weidner, 2003, p. 445). In addition, Karen Daly, a legal scholar, maintains that the purest form of academic freedom as a justification for teachers' First Amendment rights is premised on the unique nature of teaching as a form of activity protected by the First Amendment (Daly, 2001, p. 1). Under this theory, the speech of teachers is somehow qualitatively different from that of other public employees and therefore necessitates special protection.
Courts, however, while often paying lip-service to this qualitative difference of the speech of teachers, routinely rely on a different definition of academic freedom when deciding such cases. In fact, Daly contends that courts that rely on the AAUP definition of academic freedom frequently deny educators the right (Daly, 2001, p. 1). Rather, these courts weigh the freedom of educators against the freedoms of parents, institutions and teachers and deny that teachers should have absolute control over the curriculum (Daly, 2001, p. 1). However, while Daly agrees that the multiple interests involved in public ed...