What should be protected in a university are not just unorthodox opinions,
but also unorthodox teaching styles and methods -- in both cases especially
those which are offensive to some segment of the community, inside and/or
outside the university.
We sometimes forget the historical context of our notion of academic
freedom. There were two traditional academic freedoms in the German
universities from which our notions of these matters ultimately derive:
Lernfreiheit and Lehrfreiheit. The first was the right of students to take
the courses they pleased, to avoid professors they disliked or did not
respect. The second was the right of the teaching faculty to teach anything
they chose and do so in any manner they chose, no matter how bizarre. The
two freedoms were in balance. Some lecturers had virtually no students;
some students attended virtually no lectures. Degrees were granted on the
basis of examinations and dissertations, usually by a committee of the
faculty. No one cared where or how a student learned the subject. Faculty
were mostly paid on the basis of the number of students who attended their
lectures, and a few had more substantial stipends as research fellows, one
per subject a full-time paying professorship.
We have largely destroyed the student side of academic freedom in order to
more effectively control their education in our interests, rather than
theirs. As a result we find that when a teacher acts in an unpopular way,
students may still be forced to endure the consequences, and so a conflict
arises between students' rights and 'academic freedom'. That conflict is
exploited by administrators who have no academic interests among their
priorities.
A faculty member should have the right to reject any student from any class
without reason or cause.
A student should have the right to take any course or not as they choose,
if a faculty member accepts them.
The university's only responsibility is to insure that there is some way a
student can prepare to meet its degree requirements in a reasonable period
of time and within a reasonable contractual cost.
It's interesting to note that the old system survives at the top of the
academic pyramid: faculty members do not have to take on mentoring of any
particular doctoral student, and doctoral students past some point (in most
countries from matriculation on) do not have to take any courses except
those they go to voluntarily.
I think we will return to something like the old system again once students
gain the freedom to assemble credits from many sources in online education
and degrees are awarded by criteria that can be met in many ways. There
will be a lot more Lehrfreiheit when Lernfriheit is once again respected.
The case of Professor Daly is, in my opinion, a stain on the reputation of
Boston College. Perhaps its administration should be aware that the
professoriate has a long memory. There are a number of academic
institutions on my personal blacklist: places I will not go to lecture,
will not evaluate candidates for, will not recommend to students or
colleagues, except in special circumstances that clearly oppose the
policies or policymakers at issue. I think that many of us quietly vote our
conscience in these matters. Why do you suppose that the reputations and
quality of departments and universities rise and fall? mainly because of
the actions of their leaders and the response of the larger academic
community to those actions on a fairly long timescale (a decade or two).
The present faculty, and to some extent also the alumni, of Boston College
have a lot to lose in this matter if they fail to demand respect for
Professor Daly. The student should not have had any absolute right to take
her class; her right to teach as she pleases should have been negotiated
with the administration some time before (and probably was). But when it
awarded her tenure, the university entered into a compact with the whole of
the professoriate to resolve any problems that arose within the parameters
of retaining her as member of the faculty. Granting tenure is supposed to
be risky for the institution; there is a price it has to pay for the
benefits of having a distinguished tenured faculty -- and a price to pay
for violating the compact of tenure.
JAY.
PS. The merits of Professor Daly's teaching methods are a separate matter.
On the whole I don't think there are any general principles regarding the
treatment of people as members of social groups or categories which have a
universal validity in relation to what constitutes good teaching. We can
enunciate such principles endlessly and discuss their hypothetical merits,
but ultimately only each teacher and each student can decide what is
acceptable for them. So long as they both have that right, the educational
community as a whole can enjoy the benefits of maximum diversity in kinds
of teacher and student relationships and behaviors. Accepting less than
that puts some political principle of the larger society above the needs of
students to learn and of teachers to experiment with method; a key element
in the traditions of academic freedom was that the university was also to
be exempted from the political needs of the larger society. Instead, in one
of many efforts to conceal its own unwillingness to resolve political
problems in ways that cost the powerful, our society tries to make
universities a tool for the 'solution' of political problems it doesn't
really want to solve. That seems a sure sign of its general political
bankruptcy.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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