Valencia Chapter AAUP

Academic Freedom - the short version

Academic freedom is a tradition and an ideal of higher education. Briefly, the management of a university gives minimal supervision to teaching and research by faculty. The faculty are trusted to do their job competently and professionally. In return, creativity and intellectual exploration flourish in this atmosphere of minimal supervision. Freedom from detailed supervision is not a license to relax.

Faculty choose their own textbooks, teaching materials, and supplementary handouts. The departmental curriculum committee, composed only of professors, sets the syllabus for required courses. It is considered highly inappropriate for a professor or administrator to tell a faculty member what grade to assign to a student. The sense of independence is strong among faculty and an example to students in their own pursuit of truth and knowledge.

This freedom is the atmosphere that fosters and nurtures the pursuit of knowledge – true education – among teachers and students alike. Unfortunately, this fundamental freedom is in danger whenever:

• teachers, researchers, or students are harassed, punished or experience retaliation for exercising their rights of free expression, free association or inquiry
• their work and the expression of their ideas in the classroom are censored
• there is a climate of fear in which teachers, researchers, or students no longer feel safe expressing their opinions or advancing ideas that may not be held by the majority