The AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles

AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles

The American Association of University Professors

    President, John Dewey, Columbia University

And the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure

Edwin R.A. Seligman (Economics), Columbia University, Chairman 

Charles E. Bennett (Latin), Cornell University

James Q. Dealey (Political Science), Brown University

Richard T. Ely (Economics), University of  Wisconsin 

Henry W. Farnam (Political Science), Yale University 

Frank A. Fetter (Economics), Princeton University 

Franklin H. Giddings (Sociology), Columbia University 

Charles A. Kofoid (Zoology), University of California

Arthur O. Lovejoy (Philosophy), The Johns Hopkins University 

Frederick W. Padelford (English), University of Washington 

Roscoe Pound (Law), Harvard University

Howard C. Warren (Psychology), Princeton University 

Ulysses G. Weatherly (Sociology), Indiana University

Accepted this GENERAL DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES on Dec 31st, 1915.

The term "academic freedom" has traditionally had two applications - to the freedom of the teacher 

and to that of the student, Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit. It need scarcely be pointed out that the 

freedom which is the subject of this report is that of the teacher. Academic freedom in this sense 

comprises three elements: freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the 

university or college; and freedom of extra-mural utterance and action. The first of these is 

almost everywhere so safeguarded that the dangers of its infringement are slight. It may therefore 

be disregarded in this report. The second and third phases of academic freedom are closely related, 

and are often distinguished. The third, however, has an importance of its own, since of late it has 

perhaps more frequently been the occasion of difficulties and controversies than has the question 

of freedom of intra-academic teaching. All five of the cases which have recently been investigated 

by committees of this Association have involved, at least as one factor, the right of university 

teachers to express their opinions freely outside the university or to engage in political 

activities in their capacity as citizens. The general principles which have to do with freedom of 

teaching in both these senses seem to the committee to be in great part, though not wholly, the 

same. In this report, therefore, we shall consider the matter primarily with reference to freedom 

of teaching within the university, and shall assume that what is said thereon is also applicable to 

the freedom of speech of university teachers outside their institutions, subject to certain 

qualifications and supplementary considerations which will be pointed out in the course of the 

report.

An adequate discussion of academic freedom must necessarily consider three matters:

(1)  the scope and basis of the power exercised by those bodies having ultimate legal authority in 

academic affairs;

(2) the nature of the academic calling;

(3) the function of the academic institution or university.

Basis of Academic Authority

American institutions of learning are usually controlled by boards of trustees as the ultimate 

repositories of power. Upon them finally it devolves to determine the measure of academic freedom 

which is to be realized in the several institutions. It therefore becomes necessary to inquire into 

the nature of the trust reposed in these boards, and to ascertain to whom the trustees are to be 

considered accountable.

The simplest case is that of the proprietary school or college designed for the propagation of 

specific doctrines prescribed by those who have furnished its endowment. It is evident that in such 

cases the trustees are bound by the deed of gift, and, whatever be their own views, are obligated 

to carry out the terms of the trust. If a church or religious denomination established a college to 

be governed by a board of trustees, with the express understanding that the college will be used as 

an instrument of propaganda in the interests of the religious faith professed by the church or 

denomination creating it, the trustees have a right to demand that everything be subordinated to 

that end. If, again, as has happened in this country, a wealthy manufacturer establishes a special 

school in a university in order to teach, among other things, the advantages of a protective 

tariff, or if, as is also the case, an institution has been endowed for the purpose of propagating 

the doctrines of socialism, the situation is analogous. All of these are essentially proprietary 

institutions, in the moral sense. They do not, at least as regards one particular subject, accept 

the principles of freedom of inquiry, of opinion, and of teaching; and their purpose is not to 

advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial 

investigators, but rather to subsidize the promotion of the opinions held by the persons, usually 

not of the scholar's calling, who provide the funds for their maintenance.

Concerning the desirability of the existence of such institutions, the committee does not desire

to express any opinion. But it is manifestly important that they should not be permitted to sail 

under false colors. Genuine boldness and thoroughness of inquiry, and freedom of speech, are 

scarcely reconcilable with the prescribed inculcation of a particular opinion upon a controverted 

question.

Such institutions are rare, however, and are becoming ever more rare. We still have, indeed, 

colleges under denominational auspices; but very few of them impose upon their trustees 

responsibility for the spread of specific doctrines. They are more and more coming to occupy, with 

respect to the freedom enjoyed by the members of their teaching bodies, the position of untrammeled 

institutions of learning, and are differentiated only by the natural influence of their respective 

historic antecedents and traditions.

Leaving aside, then, the small number of institutions of the proprietary type, what is the nature 

of the trust reposed in the governing boards of the ordinary institutions of learning? Can colleges 

and universities that are not strictly bound by their founders to a propagandist duty ever be 

included in the class of institutions that we have just described as being in a moral sense 

proprietary? The answer is clear. If the former class of institutions constitute a private or 

proprietary trust, the latter constitute a public trust. The trustees are trustees for the public. 

In the case of our state universities this is self-evident. In the case of most of our privately 

endowed institutions, the situation is really not different. They cannot be permitted to assume the 

proprietary attitude and privilege, if they are appealing to the general public for support.

Trustees of such universities or colleges have no moral right to bind the reason or the  conscience 

of any professor. All claim to such right is waived by the appeal to the general public for 

contributions and for moral support in the maintenance, not of a propaganda, but of a nonpartisan 

institution of learning. It follows that any university which lays restrictions upon the 

intellectual freedom of its professors proclaims itself a proprietary institution, and should be so 

described whenever it makes a general appeal for funds; and the public should be advised that the 

institution has no claim whatever to general support or regard.

This elementary distinction between a private and a public trust is not yet so universally accepted 

as it should be in our American institutions. While in many universities and colleges the situation 

has come to be entirely satisfactory, there are others in which the relation of trustees to 

professors is apparently still conceived to be analogous to that of a private employer to his 

employees; in which, therefore, trustees are not regarded as debarred by any moral restrictions, 

beyond their own sense of expediency, from imposing their personal opinions upon the teaching of 

the institutions, or even from employing the power of dismissal to gratify their private 

antipathies or resentments. An eminent university president thus described the  situation not many 

years since:

In the institutions of higher education the board of trustees is the body on whose discretion, good 

feeling, and experience the securing of academic freedom now depends. There are boards which

leave nothing to be desired in these respects; but there are also numerous bodies that have

everything to learn with regard to academic freedom. These barbarous boards exercise an

arbitrary power of dismissal. They exclude from the teachings of the university unpopular or

dangerous subjects. In some states they even treat professors' positions as common political

spoils; and all too frequently, both  in state and endowed institutions, they fail to treat the

members of the teaching staff with that high consideration to which their functions entitle them.¹

It is, then, a prerequisite to a realization of the proper measure of academic freedom in American 

institutions of learning, that all boards of trustees should understand - as many already do - the 

full implications of the distinction between private proprietorship and a public trust.

The Nature of the Academic Calling

The above-mentioned conception of a university as an ordinary business venture, and of academic 

teaching as a purely private employment, manifests also a radical failure to apprehend the nature 

of the social function discharged by the professional scholar. While we should be reluctant to 

believe that any large number of educated persons suffer from such a misapprehension, it seems 

desirable at this time to restate clearly the chief reasons, lying in the nature of the university 

teaching profession, why it is to the public interest that the professional office should be one 

both of dignity and of independence.

If education is the cornerstone of the structure of society and if progress in scientific knowledge 

is essential to civilization, few things can be more important than to enhance the dignity of the 

scholar's profession, with a view of attracting into its ranks men of the highest ability, of sound 

learning, and of strong and independent character. This is the more essential because the pecuniary 

emoluments of the profession are not, and doubtless never will be, equal to those open to the more 

successful members of other professions. It is not, in our opinion, desirable that men should be 

drawn into this profession by the magnitude of the economic rewards which it offers; but it is for 

this reason the more needful that men of high gifts and character should be drawn into it by the 

assurance of an honorable and secure position, and of freedom to perform honestly and according to 

their own consciences the distinctive and important function which the nature of the profession 

lays upon them.

That function is to deal at first hand, after prolonged and specialized technical training, with 

the sources of knowledge; and to impart the results of their own and of their fellow-specialists' 

investigation and reflection, both to students and to the general public, without fear or favor.

The proper discharge of this function requires (among other things) that the university teacher 

shall be exempt from any pecuniary motive or inducement to hold, or to express, any 

conclusion which is not the genuine and uncolored product of his own study or that of fellow- 

specialists. Indeed, the proper fulfillment of the work of the professoriate requires that our 

universities shall be so free that no fair-minded person shall find any excuse for even a suspicion 

that the utterances of university teachers are shaped or restricted by the judgment, not of 

professional scholars, but of inexpert and possibly not wholly disinterested persons outside of 

their ranks. The lay public is under no compulsion to accept or to act upon the opinions of the 

scientific experts whom, though the universities, it employs. But it is highly needful, in the 

interest of society at large, that what purport to be the conclusions of men trained for, and 

dedicated to, the quest for truth, shall in fact be the conclusions of such men, and not echoes of 

the opinions of the lay public, or of the individuals who endow or manage universities. To the 

degree that professional scholars, in the formation and promulgation of their opinions, are, or by 

the character of their tenure appear to be, subject to any motive other than their own scientific 

conscience and a desire for the respect of their fellow-experts, to that degree the university 

teaching profession is corrupted; its proper influence upon public opinion is diminished and 

vitiated; and society at large fails to get from its scholars, in an unadulterated form, the 

peculiar and necessary service which it is the office of the professional scholar to furnish.

These considerations make still more clear the nature of the relationship between university 

trustees and members of university faculties. The latter are the appointees, but not in any proper 

sense the employees, of the former. For, once appointed, the scholar has professional functions to 

perform in which appointing authorities have neither competency nor moral right to intervene. The 

responsibility of the university teacher is primarily to the public itself, and to the judgment of 

his own profession; and while, with respect to certain external conditions of his vocation, he 

accepts a responsibility to the authorities of the institution in which he serves, in the 

essentials of his professional activity his duty is to the wider public to which the institution 

itself is morally amenable. So far as the university teacher's independence of thought and 

utterance is concerned - though not in other regards - the relationship of professor to trustees 

may be compared to that between judges of the Federal courts and the Executive who appoints them. 

University teachers should be understood to be, with respect to the conclusions reached and 

expressed by them, no more subject to the control of the trustees than are judges subject to the 

control of the President with respect to their decisions; while of course, for the same reason, 

trustees are no more to be held responsible for, or to be presumed to agree with, the opinions or 

utterances of professors than the President can be assumed to approve of all the legal reasonings 

of the courts. A university is a great and indispensable organ of the higher life of a civilized 

community, in the work of which the trustees hold an essential and highly honorable place, but in 

which the faculties hold an independent place, with quite equal responsibilities - and in relation 

to purely scientific and educational questions, the primary responsibility.

Misconception or obscurity in this matter had undoubtedly been a source of occasional difficulty in 

the past, and even in several instances during the current year, however much, in the main, a long 

tradition of kindly and courteous intercourse between trustees and members of university faculties 

has kept the question in the background.

The Function of the Academic Institution

The importance of academic freedom is most clearly perceived in the light of the purposes for which 

universities exist. These are three in number.

A.   To promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge.

B.   To provide general instruction to the students.

C.   To develop experts for various branches of the public service.

Let us consider each of these. In the earlier stages of a nation's intellectual development, the 

chief concern of educational institutions is to train the growing generation and to diffuse the 

already accepted knowledge. It is only slowly that there comes to be provided in the highest 

institutions of learning the opportunity for the gradual wresting from nature of her intimate 

secrets. The modern university is becoming more and more the home of scientific research. There are 

three fields of human inquiry in which the race is only at the beginning: natural science, social 

science, and philosophy and religion, dealing with the relations of man to our nature, to his 

fellowmen, and to ultimate realities and values. In natural science all that we have learned but 

serves to make us realize more deeply how much more remains to be discovered. In social science in 

its largest sense, which is concerned with the relations of men in society and with the conditions 

of social order and well-being, we have learned only an adumbration of the laws which govern these 

vastly complex phenomena. Finally, in the spiritual life, and in the interpretation of the general 

meaning and ends of human existence and its relation to the universe, we are still far from a 

comprehension of the final truths, and from a universal agreement among all sincere and earnest 

men. In all of these domains of knowledge, the first condition of progress is complete and 

unlimited freedom to pursue inquiry and publish its results. Such freedom is the breath in the 

nostrils of all scientific activity.

The second function - which for a long time was the only function - of the American college or 

university is to provide instruction for students. It is scarcely open to question that freedom of 

utterance is as important to the teacher as it is to the investigator.  No can be a successful 

teacher unless he enjoys the respect of his students, and their confidence in his intellectual 

integrity. It is clear, however, that this confidence will be impaired if there is suspicion on the 

part of the student that the teacher is not expressing himself fully or frankly, or that college 

and university teachers in general are a repressed and intimidated class who dare not speak with 

that candor and courage which youth always demands in those whom it is to esteem. The average 

student is a discerning observer, who soon takes the measure of his instructor. It is not only the 

character of the instruction but also the character of the instructor that counts; and if the 

student has reason to believe that the instructor is not true to himself, the virtue of the 

instruction as an educative force is incalculably diminished. There must be in the mind of the 

teacher no mental reservation. He must give the student the best of what he has and what he is.

The third function of the modern university is to develop experts for the use of the community. If 

there is one thing that distinguishes the more recent developments of democracy, it is the 

recognition by legislators of the inherent complexities of economic, social and political life, and 

the difficulty of solving problems of technical adjustment without technical knowledge. The 

recognition of this fact has led to a continually greater demand for the aid of experts in these 

subjects, to advise both legislators and administrators. The training of such experts has, 

accordingly, in recent years, become an important part of work of the universities; and in almost 

every one of our higher institutions of learning the professors of the economic, social, and 

political sciences have been drafted to an increasing extent into more or less unofficial 

participation in the public service. It is obvious that here again the scholar must be absolutely 

free not only to pursue his investigations but to declare the results of his researches, no matter 

where they may lead him or to what extent they may come into conflict with accepted opinion. To be 

of use to the legislator or the administrator, he must enjoy their complete confidence in the 

disinterestedness of his conclusions.

It is clear, then, that the university cannot perform its threefold function without accepting and 

enforcing to the fullest extent the principle of academic freedom. The responsibility of the 

university as a whole is to the community at large, and any restriction upon the freedom of the 

instructor is bound to react injuriously upon the efficiency and the morale of the institution, and 

therefore ultimately upon the interests of the community.

The attempted infringements of academic freedom at present are probably not only of less frequency 

than, but of a different character from, those to be found in former times. In the early period of 

university development in America the chief menace to academic freedom was ecclesiastical, and the 

disciplines chiefly affected were philosophy and the natural sciences. In more recent times the 

danger zone has been shifted to the political and social sciences—though we still aehv sporadic 

examples of the former class of cases in some of our smaller institutions. But it is precisely in 

these provinces of knowledge in which academic freedom is now most likely to be threatened, that 

the need for it is at the same time most evident. No person of intelligence believes that all of 

our political problems have been solved, or that the final stage of social evolution has been 

reached. Grave issues in the adjustment of men's social and economic relations are certain to call 

for settlement in the years that are to come; and for the right settlement of them mankind will 

need all wisdom, all the good will, all the soberness of mind, and all the knowledge drawn from 

experience, that it can command. Toward this settlement the university has potentially its own very 

great contribution to make; for if the adjustment reached is to be a wise one, it must take due 

account of economic science, and be guided by that breadth of historic vision which it should be 

one of the functions of a university to cultivate. But if the universities are to render any such 

service toward the right solution of the social problems of the future, it is the first essential 

that the scholars who carry on the work of universities shall not be in a position of dependence 

upon the favor of any social class or group, that the disinterestedness and impartiality of their 

inquiries and their conclusions shall be, so far as is humanly possible, beyond the reach of 

suspicion.

The special dangers to freedom of teaching in the domain of the social sciences are evidently two. 

The one which is the more likely to affect the privately endowed colleges and universities is the 

danger of restrictions upon the expression of opinions which point toward extensive social 

innovations, or call in question the moral legitimacy or social expediency of economic conditions 

or commercial practices in which large vested interests are involved. In the political, social, and 

economic field almost every question, no matter how large and general it at first appears, is more 

or less affected with private or class interests; and, as the governing body of a university is 

naturally made up of men who through their standing and ability are personally interested in great 

private enterprises, the points of possible conflict are numberless. When to this is added the 

consideration that benefactors, as well as most of the parents who send their children to privately 

endowed institutions, themselves belong to the more prosperous and therefore usually to the more 

conservative classes, it is apparent that, so long as effectual safeguards for academic freedom are 

not established, there is a real danger that pressure from vested interests may, sometimes 

deliberately and sometimes unconsciously, sometimes openly and sometimes subtly and in obscure 

ways, be brought to bear upon academic authorities.

On the other hand, in our state universities the danger may be the reverse. Where the university is 

dependent for funds upon legislative favor, it has sometimes happened that the conduct of 

institution has been affected by political considerations; and where there is a definite 

governmental policy or a strong public feeling on economic, social, or political questions, the 

menace to academic freedom may consist in the repression of opinions that in the particular 

political situation are deemed ultra-conservative rather than ultra-radical. The essential point, 

however, is not so much that the opinion is of one or another shade, as that differs from the views 

entertained by authorities. The question resolves itself into one of departure from accepted 

standards; whether the departure is in the one direction or the other is immaterial.

This brings us to the most serious difficulty of this problem; namely, the dangers connected with 

the existence in a democracy of an overwhelming and concentrated public opinion. The tendency of 

modern democracy is for men to think alike, to feel alike, and to speak alike. Any departure from 

the conventional standards is apt to be regarded with suspicion. Public opinion is at once the 

chief safeguard of a democracy, and the chief menace to the real liberty of an individual. It almost

seems as if the danger of despotism cannot be wholly averted under any form of government. In a

political autocracy there is no effective public opinion, and all are subject to tyranny of the ruler; in a

democracy there is political freedom, but there is likely to be a tyranny of public opinion.

An inviolable refuge from such tyranny should be found in the university. It should be an 

intellectual experiment station, where new ideas may germinate and where their fruit, though still 

distasteful to the community as a whole, may be allowed to ripen until finally, perchance, it may 

become part of the accepted intellectual food of the nation or of the world. Not less is it a 

distinctive duty of the university to be the conservator of all genuine elements of value in the 

past thought and life of mankind which are not in the fashion of the moment. Though it need not be 

the "home of beaten causes," the university is, indeed, likely always to exercise a certain form of 

conservative influence. For by its nature it is committed to the principle that knowledge should 

precede action, to the caution (by no means synonymous with intellectual timidity) which is an 

essential part of the scientific method, to a sense of the complexity of social problems, to the 

practice of taking long views into the future, and to a reasonable regard for the teachings of 

experience. One of its most characteristic functions in a democratic society is to help make public 

opinion more self-critical and more circumspect, to check the more hasty and unconsidered impulses 

of popular feeling, to train the democracy to the habit of looking before and after. It is 

precisely this function of the university which is most injured by any restriction upon academic 

freedom; and it is precisely those who most value this aspect of the university's work who should 

most earnestly protest against any such restriction. For the public may respect, and be influenced 

by, the counsels of prudence and of moderation which are given by men of science, if it believes 

those counsels to be the disinterested expression of the scientific temper and of unbiased inquiry. 

It is little likely to respect or heed them if it has reason to believe that they are the 

expression of the interests, or the timidities, of the limited portion of the community which is in 

a position to endow institutions of learning, or is most likely to be represented upon their boards 

of trustees. And a plausible reason for this belief is given the public so long as our universities 

are not organized in such a way as to make impossible any exercise of pressure upon professorial 

opinions and utterances by governing boards of laymen.

Since there are no rights without corresponding duties, the considerations heretofore set down with 

respect to the freedom of the academic teacher entail certain correlative obligations. The claim to 

freedom of teaching is made in the interest of integrity and of the progress of scientific inquiry; 

it is, therefore, only those who carry on their work in the temper of the scientific inquirer who 

may justly assert this claim. The liberty of the scholar within the university to set forth his 

conclusions, be they what they may, is conditioned by their being conclusions gained by a scholar's 

method and held in a scholar's spirit; that is to say, they must be the fruits of competent and 

patient and sincere inquiry, and they should be set forth with dignity, courtesy, and temperateness 

of language. The university teacher, in giving instructions upon  controversial matters, while he 

is under no obligation to hide his own opinion under a  mountain of equivocal verbiage, should, if 

he is fit for his position, be a person of a fair and judicial mind; he should, in dealing with 

such subjects, set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other 

investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions 

of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should, above all, 

remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train 

them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they 

are to think intelligently.

It is, however, for reasons which have already been made evident, inadmissible that the power of 

determining when departures from the requirements of the scientific spirit and method have 

occurred, should be vested in bodies not composed of members of the academic profession.

Such bodies necessarily lack full competency to judge of those requirements; their intervention 

can never be exempt from the suspicion that it is dictated by other motives than zeal for the 

integrity of science; and it is, in any case, unsuitable to the dignity of a great profession that 

the initial responsibility for the maintenance of its professional standards should not be in the  

hands of its own members. It follows that university teachers must be prepared to assume this 

responsibility for themselves. They have hitherto seldom had the opportunity, or perhaps the 

disposition, to do so. The obligation will doubtless, therefore, seem to many an unwelcome and 

burdensome one; and for its proper discharge members of the profession will perhaps need to 

acquire, in a greater measure than they at present possess it, the capacity for impersonal judgment 

in such cases, and for judicial severity when the occasion requires it. But the responsibility 

cannot, in this committee's opinion, be rightfully evaded. If this profession should prove itself 

unwilling to purge its ranks of the incompetent and the unworthy, or to prevent the freedom which 

it claims in the name of science from being used as a shelter for inefficiency, for superficiality, 

or for uncritical and intemperate partisanship, it is certain that the task will be performed by 

others--by others who lack certain essential qualifications for performing it, and whose action is 

sure to breed suspicions and recurrent controversies deeply injurious to the internal order and the 

public standing of universities. Your committee has, therefore, in the appended "Practical 

Proposals" attempted to suggest means by which judicial action by representatives of the 

profession, with respect to the matters here referred to, may be secured.

There is one case in which the academic teacher is under an obligation to observe certain special 

restraints - namely, the instruction of immature students. In many of our American colleges, and 

especially in the first two years of the course, the student's character is not yet fully formed, 

his mind is still relatively immature. In these circumstances it may reasonably be expected that 

the instructor will present scientific truth with discretion, that he will introduce the student to 

new conceptions gradually, with some consideration for the student's preconceptions and traditions, 

and with due regard to character-building. The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard 

against taking unfair advantage of the students' immaturity by indoctrinating him with the 

teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions 

upon the matters of question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness in judgment to be 

entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or 

university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only 

patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues. 

By these suggestions, however, it need scarcely be said that the committee does not intend to imply 

that it is not the duty of an academic instructor to give to any students old enough to be in 

college a genuine intellectual awakening and to arouse in them a keen desire to reach personally 

verified conclusions upon all questions of general concernment to mankind, or of special 

significance for their own time. There is much truth in some remarks recently made in this 

connection by a college president:

Certain professors have been refused re-election lately, apparently because they set their students 

to thinking in ways objectionable to the trustees. It would be well if more teachers were dismissed 

because they fail to stimulate thinking of any kind. We can afford to forgive a college professor 

what we regard as the occasional error of his doctrine, especially as we may be wrong, provided he 

is a contagious center of intellectual enthusiasm. It is better for students to think about 

heresies than not to think at all; better for them to climb new trails, and stumble over error if 

need be, than to ride forever in upholstered ease in the overcrowded highway. It is a primary duty 

of a teacher to make a student take an honest account of his stock of ideas, throw out the dead 

matter, place revised price marks on what is left, and try to fill his empty shelves with new 

goods.²

It is, however, possible and necessary that such intellectual awakening be brought about with 

patience, considerateness, and pedagogical wisdom. There is one further consideration with regard to

the classroom utterances of college and university teachers to which the committee thinks it important

to call the attention of members of the profession, and of administrative authorities. Such utterances

ought always to be considered privileged communications. Discussions in the classroom ought not to be

supposed to be utterances for the public at large. They are often designed to provoke opposition or

arouse debate. It has, unfortunately, sometimes happened in this country that sensational newspapers

have quoted and garbled such remarks. As a matter of common law, it is clear that the utterances of an

academic instructor are privileged, and may not be published, in whole or part, without his authorization.³  

But our practice, unfortunately, still differs from that of foreign countries, and no effective 

check has in this country been put upon such unauthorized and often misleading publication. It is 

much to be desired that test cases should be made of any infractions of the rule.In their extramural

 utterances, it is obvious that academic teachers are under a peculiar obligation to avoid hasty or

 unverified or exaggerated statements, and to refrain from intemperate or sensational modes of

 expression. But subject to these restraints, it is not, in this committee's opinion, desirable that scholars

 should be debarred from giving expression to their judgments upon controversial questions, or that

 their freedom of speech, outside the university, should be limited to questions falling within their own

 specialties. It is clearly not proper that they should be prohibited from lending their active support to

 organized movements which they believe to be in the public interest. And, speaking broadly, it may be

 said in the words of a nonacademic body already once quoted in a publication of the Association, that

 "it is neither possible nor desirable to deprive a college professor of the political rights vouchsafed to

 every citizen."⁴

It is, however, a question deserving of consideration by members of the Association, and by 

university officials, how far academic teachers, at least those dealing with political, economic, 

and social subjects, should be prominent in the management of our great party organizations, or 

should be candidates for state or national offices of a distinctly political character. It is 

manifestly desirable that such teachers have minds untrammeled by party loyalties, unexcited by 

party enthusiasms, and unbiased by personal political ambitions; and that universities should 

remain uninvolved in party antagonisms. On the other hand, it is equally manifest that the material 

available for the service of the State would be restricted in a highly undesirable way, if it were 

understood that no member of the academic profession should ever be called upon to assume the 

responsibilities of public office. This question may, in the committee's opinion, suitably be made 

a topic for special discussion at some future meeting of this Association, in order that a 

practical policy, which shall do justice to the two partially  conflicting considerations that bear 

upon the matter, may be agreed upon.

It is, it will be seen, in no sense the contention of this committee that academic freedom implies 

that individual teachers should be exempt from all restraints as to the matter or manner of their 

utterances, either within or without the university. Such restraints as are necessary should in  

the main, our committee holds, be self-imposed, or enforced by the public opinion of the 

profession. But there may, undoubtedly, arise occasional cases in which the aberrations of 

individuals may require to be checked by definite disciplinary action. What this report chiefly 

maintains is that such action cannot with safety be taken by bodies not composed of members of the 

academic profession. Lay governing boards are competent to judge concerning charges of habitual 

neglect of assigned duties, on the part of individual teachers, and concerning charges  of grave 

moral delinquency. But in matters of opinion, and of the utterance of opinion, such boards cannot 

intervene without destroying, to the extent of their intervention, the essential nature of a 

university - without converting it from a place dedicated to openness of mind, in which the 

conclusions expressed are the tested conclusions of trained scholars, into a place barred against the

access of new light, and precommitted to the opinions or prejudices of men who have not been set apart

or expressly trained for the scholar's duties. It is, in short, not the absolute freedom of utterance of the

individual scholar, but the absolute freedom of thought, of inquiry, of discussion, and of teaching, of the

academic profession, that is asserted by this declaration of principles. It is conceivable that our

profession may prove unworthy of its high calling, and unfit to exercise the responsibilities that belong

to it. But it will scarcely be said as yet to have given evidence of such unfitness. And the existence of

this Association, as it seems to our committee, must be construed as a pledge, not only that the

profession will earnestly guard those liberties without which it cannot rightly render its distinctive and

indispensable service to society, but also that it will with equal earnestness seek to maintain such

 standards of professional character, and of scientific integrity and competency, as shall make it a fit 

instrument for that service.

________________    _________    __

1 From "Academic Freedom," an address delivered before the New York Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cornell University, May 29, 1907, by Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University.

2 William T. Foster, President of Reed College, in The Nation, November 11, 1915.

3 The leading case is Abernathy vs. Hutchinson, 3 L.J., Ch. 209. In this case, where damages were awarded, the court held as follows: "That persons who are admitted as pupils or otherwise to hear these lectures, although they are orally delivered and the parties might go to the extent, if they were able to do so, of putting down the whole by means of shorthand, yet they can do that only for the purpose of their own information and could not publish, for profit, that which they had not obtained the right of selling."

4 Report of the Wisconsin State Board of Public Affairs, December 1914.

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Source:  Appendix A of Academic Freedom and Tenure: A Handbook of the American Association of the American Association of University Professors,, Edited by Louis Joughin, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin. 1967. pp.155 - 176.