Goldstein on Academic Freedom
Then, the union demanded that BC president C.M. Kimmich ignore his requirements under the CUNY Bylaws to certify that all professors elected to chair their departments be able to act as spokespersons for the department and college, and immediately approve the election to chair of a sociology prof. Who had written, among other off-the-wall items, that all religious people were “moral retards.” (For good measure, the PSC previewed the Times’ Judy Miller strategy of allowing an extreme voice to essentially speak for the entire institution, claiming that Kimmich, when asked by the media, had no right to comment on the substance of the professor’s remarks.)
Finally, after a New York Sun article appeared quoting several students who appeared to have experienced attempted ideological indoctrination in an Education class, the PSC demanded that the CUNY chancellor publicly condemn the article—prompting a vigorous rebuke by BC student leader Yehuda Katz. (The union seemed blissfully unaware that the legal protections for academic freedom rest under the same First Amendment protections that the PSC wanted the Chancellor to publicly condemn.)
All told, these pronouncements exhibited about the same quality of thought as demonstrated at the union’s recent strike rally, when a senior professor urged sympathy on the grounds that she might not be able to live in her neighborhood of choice on a $118,000 salary. Fortunately, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has issued a measured and reasoned defense of academic freedom, demonstrating at the very least that the PSC doesn’t speak for the institution in its bizarre definition of the concept.
In the Chancellor’s words, academic freedom is not exclusively confined to the majority faction among the current faculty, since, “At CUNY, as at other reputable institutions of higher education, academic freedom informs the entire academic community: the free exchange of ideas applies to students choosing a course of study, to faculty pursuing scholarly research and teaching, and to institutions admitting students, appointing faculty, and setting standards.” Accordingly,
the University encourages informed discussion and expects its faculty members to pursue rigorous thinking and debate without restraint. Such an expectation exists for other members of the University community, as well. As faculty express their views, students and administrators must, as well. The former president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, himself a champion of academic freedom, offered this description:"Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view."
Goldstein also dismissed the union’s unfortunate conflation of “academic freedom” with contract demands, and notes that the existence of dissent on campus doesn’t imply an assault on academic freedom (as the union implied). “On the contrary,” he notes, “it is often indicative of an active, and free, exchange of ideas.” It’s ironic, and in a way disheartening, to see an administrator defend the spirit of free exchange on campus more strongly than the faculty union.