Eric Rauchway: Chemerinsky, Summers, and Academic Freedom
[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. ]
When the University of California Regents rescinded former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's invitation to speak at a Board dinner this month, it was too easy to link Summers with Erwin Chemerinsky: Just days before, the University of California at Irvine had rescinded Chemerinsky's invitation to serve as dean of their new law school. While the two cases share some common elements--in both, the officials reneged under pressure on commitments presumably made in good faith and for good reasons--the superficial similarities conceal deep differences. In the Chemerinsky case, UC threatened Chemerinsky's academic freedom; in the Summers case, UC threatened mine--and that of everyone else who teaches here.
UCI unhired Erwin Chemerinsky because, he said, they were worried about "conservatives out to get me," and they knew some of the UC Regents would vigorously oppose him. This threat almost certainly came from someone outside UCI: maybe the politician who said appointing Chemerinsky dean would be "like appointing Al Qaeda in charge of homeland security," maybe a discontented donor, maybe both.
Universities' vulnerability to outside pressure is what brought us academic freedom in the first place. In 1900, the Stanford economist-turned-sociologist Edward Ross said he opposed immigration because it threatened Anglo-Saxon racial purity. Jane Stanford, widow of railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and benefactor of the university (as well as beneficiary of immigrant labor) insisted Ross be fired. Ross countered, "It is my duty as an economist to impart ... in a scientific spirit, my conclusions on subjects with which I am expert." Mrs. Stanford won.
The Ross case inspired what became the American Association of University Professors' 1915 "General Declaration of Principles." In it, the AAUP explained universities must act so it is clear that "what purport to be the conclusions of men [sic] trained for, and dedicated to, the quest for truth, shall in fact be the conclusions of such men, and not echoes of the opinion of the lay public, or the individuals who manage or endow universities." Otherwise the truth is imperiled.
As the AAUP's 1915 statement indicates, academic freedom differs from freedom of speech. Scholars enjoy it not because they have First Amendment rights (indeed, as the historian Thomas Haskell points out, in 1915, nobody had the First Amendment rights Americans enjoy today) but because of their training and participation in a specialized community of inquiry. What Ross said, though unpleasing to us and indeed to many decent people in 1900, was at the time within the realm of legitimate sociology. His ideas demanded investigation and critique--not firing.
Insofar as UCI succumbed to "the opinion of the lay public, or the individuals who manage or endow universities" when it unhired Erwin Chemerinsky for expressing opinions within his expert competence (including especially his comments on now-resigned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales), they obviously violated a core canon of academic freedom. Perhaps because the case was so blindingly clear, UCI un-unhired Chemerinsky.
Summers's case differs. Here, the objection came from within the community of scholarly inquirers at UC Davis who organized a petition signed by UC professors who believe it "inappropriate at a time when the University is searching for a new president" to invite Summers, who "has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia" since his clash with African American Studies professor Cornel West and his 2005 comments on genetic differences in scientific aptitude between men and women.
You might think this looks a lot like the case of Edward Ross--in both, a northern California university doesn't want to hear from an economist talking the sociology of innate differences. But there are key distinctions. Summers doesn't work here and, as one of his Harvard colleagues points out, he doesn't have the right to "speak anywhere and everywhere" or indeed on everything....
Read entire article at New Republic
When the University of California Regents rescinded former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's invitation to speak at a Board dinner this month, it was too easy to link Summers with Erwin Chemerinsky: Just days before, the University of California at Irvine had rescinded Chemerinsky's invitation to serve as dean of their new law school. While the two cases share some common elements--in both, the officials reneged under pressure on commitments presumably made in good faith and for good reasons--the superficial similarities conceal deep differences. In the Chemerinsky case, UC threatened Chemerinsky's academic freedom; in the Summers case, UC threatened mine--and that of everyone else who teaches here.
UCI unhired Erwin Chemerinsky because, he said, they were worried about "conservatives out to get me," and they knew some of the UC Regents would vigorously oppose him. This threat almost certainly came from someone outside UCI: maybe the politician who said appointing Chemerinsky dean would be "like appointing Al Qaeda in charge of homeland security," maybe a discontented donor, maybe both.
Universities' vulnerability to outside pressure is what brought us academic freedom in the first place. In 1900, the Stanford economist-turned-sociologist Edward Ross said he opposed immigration because it threatened Anglo-Saxon racial purity. Jane Stanford, widow of railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and benefactor of the university (as well as beneficiary of immigrant labor) insisted Ross be fired. Ross countered, "It is my duty as an economist to impart ... in a scientific spirit, my conclusions on subjects with which I am expert." Mrs. Stanford won.
The Ross case inspired what became the American Association of University Professors' 1915 "General Declaration of Principles." In it, the AAUP explained universities must act so it is clear that "what purport to be the conclusions of men [sic] trained for, and dedicated to, the quest for truth, shall in fact be the conclusions of such men, and not echoes of the opinion of the lay public, or the individuals who manage or endow universities." Otherwise the truth is imperiled.
As the AAUP's 1915 statement indicates, academic freedom differs from freedom of speech. Scholars enjoy it not because they have First Amendment rights (indeed, as the historian Thomas Haskell points out, in 1915, nobody had the First Amendment rights Americans enjoy today) but because of their training and participation in a specialized community of inquiry. What Ross said, though unpleasing to us and indeed to many decent people in 1900, was at the time within the realm of legitimate sociology. His ideas demanded investigation and critique--not firing.
Insofar as UCI succumbed to "the opinion of the lay public, or the individuals who manage or endow universities" when it unhired Erwin Chemerinsky for expressing opinions within his expert competence (including especially his comments on now-resigned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales), they obviously violated a core canon of academic freedom. Perhaps because the case was so blindingly clear, UCI un-unhired Chemerinsky.
Summers's case differs. Here, the objection came from within the community of scholarly inquirers at UC Davis who organized a petition signed by UC professors who believe it "inappropriate at a time when the University is searching for a new president" to invite Summers, who "has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia" since his clash with African American Studies professor Cornel West and his 2005 comments on genetic differences in scientific aptitude between men and women.
You might think this looks a lot like the case of Edward Ross--in both, a northern California university doesn't want to hear from an economist talking the sociology of innate differences. But there are key distinctions. Summers doesn't work here and, as one of his Harvard colleagues points out, he doesn't have the right to "speak anywhere and everywhere" or indeed on everything....