The Lack of Academic Freedom on College Campuses
I was speaking with a CMC alum over the weekend about our campus climate, and he said that understanding the way these are socially structured is useful for understanding the workplace. Essentially, things like being canceled, or socially punished are similar to reactions that may happen at a firm. However, at a firm one would most likely be fired. After hearing this point, I began to think about how private colleges may affect students' freedom. I won’t necessarily be referring to CMC in this blog post, as CMC relative to other liberal arts colleges strongly emphasizes the importance of freedom of speech and diversity of thought. My main focus will be on other colleges who lack the structure and policies to promote these freedoms.
Many colleges lack necessary policies to ensure students are graded as objectively as possible. In many courses, students must understand the professor’s political leanings or feelings about the course material to obtain a good grade. By that, many professors are biased towards students who agree with them, and will grade them better. Even understanding a professor’s biases may not lead to consistently good grades, because factors like favoritism, likability of the student and others are included as well. It seems very difficult to gauge the way professors grade in these courses, even if a rubric and grading guidelines are included. Thus, we are under the arbitrary will of our professor’s in order to get a good grade in the class. It is against many people’s interests who want to get a good grade, to feel inclined to share their viewpoints. Basically students are afraid to speak due to potential repercussions from professors. So many students have no freedom of speech. With that, we lose one of the most important aspects in academics, diversity of thought. Further, there are other examples of lack of academic freedom generally. On college campuses, speakers have been revoked due to controversies, professors have been fired for grading students the same and there have been many other reasons .
These campuses lack the necessary resources to promote freedom of speech. CMC has good policies for upholding freedom of speech, as they are foundational to the college. They created the Open Academy which is committed to freedom of expression and open inquiry, diversity of viewpoint and experience and constructive and effective dialogue. Prior to that University of Chicago created the “Chicago statement” which is a free speech policy that 80 institutions have signed (CMC is one!). This statement provides students and faculty protection for academic freedom. These policies should be accepted by all universities, to ensure that students are not subject to the arbitrary will of their professors, and have more freedom.
However, it is difficult to monitor and protect students' freedom outside of the classroom. By that, students, and people in general, have become increasingly more fearful to post, say, or do anything that might cause an “uproar” and lead them to be “canceled.” Canceling people can lead to people losing their jobs, and many other significant aspects of their life. With that, it seems we have limited freedom as it is subject to us potentially losing our job or other significant parts of our lives. My main focus is on academic freedom, but I thought it would be interesting to include the impact of cancel culture on our freedoms. Further, I was interested in hearing how others felt about cancel culture in regards to Anderson’s account of freedom?
Hi Kara! As I was reading your blog post it reminded me of a NYT article that appeared 3 days ago on exact same topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opinion/campus-speech-cancel-culture.html - maybe you'll find it interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as though there are two issue at stake here. First, there seems to be a potential reduction in liberty that you are trying to point out regarding "cancellation" in interactions between students; or, at least, it seems as though this potential threat to liberty does not stem directly from professors or institutions. Second, you seem to be identifying professors themselves as a potential threat to liberty insomuch as their actions promote a kind of political conformity and reduce the genuine ability of people to voice their conscience. As to the first potential threat you discuss, it seems, as Zac and Rukmini point out, that this is a natural consequence of the free, unplanned actions of people making decisions based upon their own moral beliefs and interests. Thus, it seems we would need to point to a definite decrease in some form of liberty to justify curtailing behavior that seems to be protected by negative liberty (i.e. non-interference). On this point, republican liberty does not seem to be especially curtailed. After all, people disliking you or strongly disagreeing with your sincerely held opinions does not seem to immediately or necessarily put you under their arbitrary will or domination. I suppose, however, if a particular sentiment was intense and widespread enough it could constitute such a deprivation of republican freedom. However, it seems hard to imagine a circumstance on a college campus in which this sentiment was strong enough to constitute placing the target under the arbitrary will of another--after all, mere discomfort or dislike does not seem to count. Likewise, it seems that the magnitude of the sentiment necessary to meaningfully decrease one's positive liberty (i.e. their ability to use their means) would have to be similarly significant. People disliking you does not seem to be an oppressive barrier to exercising one's powers to utilizing one's means.
ReplyDeleteAs to the potential threat professors seem to pose to academic freedom, this issue seems to run up against another kind or conception of "academic freedom." Namely, the latitude to teach and instruct as a faculty member sees fit. This freedom from administrative control (a segment of power not as explicitly touched upon in this post) seems to also be an integral component of the academic freedom that Kara prizes. Indeed, a more centralized, coercive cadre of administrators would likely be necessary to enforce certain measures surrounding the provision of ideological diversity or the ensure the "objectivity" of professor's grading. Even the desire for an "objective" grading system seems to be a nebulous concept. What would this entail? How does one define objective grading in philosophy? Economics? History? Art? This seems like opening up the door to the very kind of confounding value judgements that Kara seeks to avoid. Furthermore, some imposition of administrative control seems likely to achieve this goal. After all, it seems merely asking nicely will be insufficient to enact the change that she sees as necessary. Thus, it seems that at least some curtailment of this faculty academic freedom is implied in order to carry out this supposed promotion of students' academic freedom. I am interested to see how Kara thinks this fits into a conception of the three forms of liberty. That is, is this an example of students' rep. liberty vs. professor's neg. liberty or some other permutation of them. Additionally, to what extent does she see this as a tradeoff between the freedom of professors with the freedom of students?