Tenure

The Line Between Prudence and Courage

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I am participating this week in a conference on higher education and the role of Christians in exercising a redemptive influence in the academic world. A message this morning told the story of a pre-tenured professor who was respectful of others but forthright in sharing how his faith informed his academic work in public presentations. As anyone who is familiar with the academic world knows, this can be risky business. Tenure depends not only on objective things like publications, funding, service, and teaching, but also on what your colleagues think of you. And no matter how good the former, if the latter is a problem, a way often can be found to deny the candidate tenure.

Truth is, this poses a serious question for any person of faith. For such people, one’s beliefs are not confined to a small segment of life but inform how one thinks about all of life. And yet increasingly, people of faith are asked to keep those beliefs to themselves and not allow it to inform their ethics or their scholarship in the academic workplace, except where that conforms to academic orthodoxy.

Admittedly, there are times for prudence. Not every outrageous remark requires an answer. Not all battles are worth fighting. There are some sleeping dogs it is best to let lie. And there is the issue of recognizing that the university is supposed to be a place where no religious view is privileged. Hopefully what that means is that we can have respectful and civil conversations about differences. It does not mean we get to enforce our faith informed view on any issue unless we can persuade others that it really makes the most sense.

But when is courage called for? That is the harder question because courageous acts always require risk, and prudence often suggests avoiding risk. It seems that one instance is where the “prudent” act would be one that deceives others about oneself and denies the truth of what one believes, perhaps including the God one believes in. Courage seems in many cases to involve simply honesty when the alternative is evasion, deception, or denial.

Courage may also be called for when the welfare of others is endangered and trouble can be avoided by avoiding speaking up. I’m reminded of a faculty member who spoke up for a Christian student group whose status on campus was called into question simply because they required their leaders to be Christian. This person, who was highly respected, was not directly connected to the group and did not need to do so, yet was convinced that the university was wrongly using its power and put his own reputation (and power) on the line to make that point.

Those are a few of my reflections. I’d be curious what others think about this issue of where the line between prudence and courage is drawn?

Defining Academic Freedom

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It has been my experience that tenured professors can say or do quite a bit under the protection of “academic freedom” (those without tenure, not so much!). In particular I’ve heard of professors advancing political views that have little or nothing to do with course material. I’ve known them to advance anti-religious views or attack religious perspectives, not in a spirit of open inquiry but simply as an expression of their opinions.

Stanley Fish would have none of this. In Save the World On Your Own Time, Fish argues for a definition of academic freedom as the freedom within the agreed upon course description and requirements to choose written materials and courses of inquiry to accomplish the goal of teaching students the content of the course. This also includes the freedom to pursue research in one’s discipline along the lines of one’s own intellectual interests without the intrusions of boards of trustees or other interests.

He would also argue that academic freedom has nothing to do with advancing multiculturalism, any political perspective or any particular moral value (other than academic honesty). Insofar as any of these are legitimate areas of inquiry in a particular course, academic analysis is appropriate–but not advancing them as ideas students must embrace.

Fish is not opposed to individuals advancing such views in other fora. That is freedom of speech. And he would argue that academics are in fact free do advance whatever views they want on their own time and undertake whatever crusades they wish outside the classroom. But he contends that their job in the classroom is instruction and inquiry related to the objectives in the course. He says some surprising things. He doesn’t think it legitimate for biologists to crusade against Intelligent Design in the classroom. He does think it legitimate to rigorously inquire whether it meets the criteria of good scientific theory.

I find this strangely refreshing. I’ve known students who have been in classes with professors who use their position to propagandize and proselytize and they fear disagreeing in discussions or papers because of the dogmatic fashion in which these positions have been asserted. The classroom in these cases has ceased to be a place where good argument and good data and the pursuit of truth are uppermost. In most cases, this abuse of power works against itself–students may comply with course rubrics for the sake of a grade, but the only thing they learn is a lesson in the use of power.

Fish takes a very limited but consistent view of academic freedom. Fish has argued vigorously in books and NY Times  op-eds to this effect against far more expansive versions he sees rampant in academic circles. He thinks all these go beyond the modest but crucial mission of educating students.  I would be interested in how others who have an interest in the life of higher education take his arguments, and how they would define academic freedom.