Academic Freedom in the Maricopa Community College District
Academic freedom is essential to the discovery and development of new knowledge and the dissemination of that knowledge by subject matter experts. The Maricopa Community Colleges are committed to protecting and preserving academic freedom in all of its forms: freedom of instruction, freedom of research and publication, freedom of intramural speech, and freedom of extramural speech.
In May of 2020, the Committee on Academic Freedom was created. According to its charter, the committee is charged with providing academic freedom education and training, serving as a source of expertise for collegial dispute resolution, and promoting a culture conducive to academic freedom and freedom of expression. The committee is composed of members of the faculty and the administration. Its membership is intentionally diverse--in faculty and administrative role, college representation, and discipline--in order to reflect the perspectives and interests of various stakeholders. Because it exists to ensure faculty academic freedom rights, it is also always composed of a faculty majority.
In service to its mission, the Committee on Academic Freedom includes three subcommittees: Education and Training, Academic Freedom Assistance, and Policy Review and Recommendation. The Education and Training subcommittee “plans, develops, and implements appropriate education and training on academic freedom and related issues necessary for all constituencies to acquire a practical understanding of academic freedom rights and responsibilities” (CAF Charter). The Academic Freedom Assistance subcommittee provides assistance to stakeholders who need guidance on an academic freedom issue or who wish to file a complaint of a violation of academic freedom within the district. The Policy Review and Recommendation subcommittee “review(s) all official policies, regulations, and procedures of the District to ensure that they properly operationalize the spirit of academic freedom as defined by the CAF” (CAF Charter).
Our understanding of academic freedom rests primarily on two foundational documents, AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles and the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The 1940 Statement clarifies the purpose of academic freedom: “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” These documents define four pillars of academic freedom for the professoriate:
Books
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Understanding Academic Freedom
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781421442150Publication Date: 2021-10-05Part of the acclaimed Higher Ed Leadership Essentials series, this book surveys academic freedom's history and its application in today's universities. Academic freedom is once again at the epicenter of the crisis in higher education. A community college instructor in Iowa is pressured to resign after his pro-antifa social media comments garner vicious harassment that administrators find threatening to campus safety. A tenured biology professor at a college on Long Island is threatened with dismissal because she allegedly grades students too strictly. And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a conservative activist calls on his followers to take advantage of online classes to send "any and all videos of blatant indoctrination" to his organization so that it might expose and blacklist "leftist professors." These incidents from the 2019-20 academic year represent only the tip of the iceberg. Academic freedom, long heralded as a core value of American higher education, may now be in as much danger as at any time since the 1950s. But what is "academic freedom"? A value upheld for one's supporters (but not one's opponents) when discussing a polarizing controversy? Or a narrow claim of privilege by a professorial elite, immune from public accountability? -
Sensitive : Academic Freedom and Campus Activism
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780822948117Publication Date: 2024-02-27Co-winner, 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award Claims that students are too sensitive are familiar on and around college campuses. The ideas of cancel culture, safe spaces, and political correctness are used to shut down discussion and prevent students from being recognized as stakeholders in higher education and as advocates for their own interests. Further, universities can claim that student activists threaten academic freedom. In Sensitive Rhetorics, Kendall Gerdes puts these claims and common beliefs into conversation with rhetorical theory to argue that critiques of sensitivity reveal a deep societal discomfort with the idea that language is a form of action. Gerdes poses important questions: What kind of harm can language and representation actually do, and how? What responsibilities do college and university teachers bear toward their students? Sensitive Rhetorics explores the answers by surfacing submerged assumptions about higher education, the role of instructors and faculty, and the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. -
Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781496221438Publication Date: 2022-01-01Dirty Knowledge explores the failure of traditional conceptions of academic freedom in the age of neoliberalism. While examining and rejecting the increasing tendency to view academic freedom as a form of free speech, Julia Schleck highlights the problem of basing academic freedom on employment protections like tenure at a time when such protections are being actively eliminated through neoliberalism's preference for gig labor. The argument traditionally made for such protections is that they help produce knowledge "for the public good" through the protected isolation of the Ivory Tower, where "pure" knowledge is sought and disseminated. In contrast, Dirty Knowledge insists that academic knowledge production is and has always been "dirty," deeply involved in the debates of its time and increasingly permeated by outside interests whose financial and material support provides some research programs with significant advantages over others. Schleck argues for a new vision of the university's role in society as one of the most important forums for contending views of what exactly constitutes a societal "good," warning that the intellectual monoculture encouraged by neoliberalism poses a serious danger to our collective futures and insisting on deliberate, material support for faculty research and teaching that runs counter to neoliberal values. -
It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781421443874Publication Date: 2022-04-26How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning? The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy--theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. -
Academic Freedom: Autonomy, Challenges and Conformation
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781839098833Publication Date: 2021-04-16Framed in the context of a world in which academic freedom is often jeopardized, or criticized by outside social forces, Academic Freedom: Autonomy, Challenges and Conformation sets out to echo the voices of faculty who have encountered challenges to academic freedom within their personal and professional careers. -
Challenges to Academic Freedom
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781421442198Publication Date: 2021-11-23A must-read collection on contemporary threats to academic freedom. Academic freedom may be threatened like never before. Yet confusion endures about what professors have a defensible right to say or publish, particularly in extramural forums like social media. At least one source of the confusion in the United States is the way in which academic freedom is often intertwined with a constitutional freedom of speech. Though related, the freedoms are distinct. In Challenges to Academic Freedom, Joseph C. Hermanowicz argues that, contrary to many historical views, academic freedom is not static. Rather, we may view academic freedom as a set of relational practices that change over time and place. -
Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780252044199Publication Date: 2021-12-14In 1960, University of Illinois professor Leo Koch wrote a public letter condoning premarital sex. He was fired. Four years later, a professor named Revilo Oliver made white supremacist remarks and claimed there was a massive communist conspiracy. He kept his job. Matthew Ehrlich revisits the Koch and Oliver cases to look at free speech, the legacy of the 1960s, and debates over sex and politics on campus. The different treatment of the two men marked a fundamental shift in the understanding of academic freedom. Their cases also embodied the stark divide over beliefs and values--a divide that remains today. Ehrlich delves into the issues behind these academic controversies and places the events in the context of a time rarely associated with dissent, but in fact a harbinger of the social and political upheavals to come. An enlightening and entertaining history, Dangerous Ideas on Campus illuminates how the university became a battleground for debating America's hot-button issues.
