By Robert A. Scott
While the accusations and demands of the federal government against Harvard, Columbia and other elite institutions garner headlines, the administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education offered to other universities should give further pause. The compact would confer preferred access to federal research funds in exchange for agreeing to demands that would compromise academic freedom and institutional independence.
University leaders must protect these priorities embedded in state-awarded institutional charters and regionally accredited campus mission statements. They are supported by many agreements on academic freedom and tenure, dating to 1915.
Support is also found in Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter’s 1957 concurring statement in Sweezy v. New Hampshire. In it, he said, “It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a university — to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”
But what do we mean by academic freedom? This form of freedom is not freedom from responsibility to students, colleagues, institutional mission or society. Instead, it is freedom to inquire, i.e., interrogate assumptions and assertions to expose the questions hidden by answers, as James Baldwin said, and special interests in government, media and even institutions. It is the freedom to think independently, to have rights, and to consider consequences, both intended and not.
It also is the freedom to imagine — to consider what might be, and how humanity might develop its humaneness. It is the freedom to express ideas without fear of reprisal or censorship.
Finally, it is the freedom to innovate, to realize what is imagined in new forms and methods.
Boards of trustees are responsible for preserving academic freedom and free speech, which are necessary for teaching and scholarship that challenge assumptions and assertions. Furthermore, college and university boards have three legal duties like those of corporate boards, the duties of care, loyalty and obedience. Care means that board members must prepare diligently, participate actively and protect the institution through appropriate oversight, including guarding against external interference.
The duty of loyalty requires that board members act in good faith and in the institution’s best interests. The duty of obedience means that boards must uphold the institution’s charter and mission, maintaining public trust through transparent stewardship.
Surprisingly, fewer than 15 percent of American college and university trustees have any professional experience in higher education. This underscores the need for rigorous orientation in academic governance, the meaning of mission and academic freedom and the higher-education landscape.
Campus presidents are too seldom thought of as educators, the keepers of an institution’s mission and legacy for transformational teaching and learning as well as protectors of academic freedom. But they have the opportunity and responsibility to define how they fulfill their roles. Are they chief executive officers or chief mission officers?
Chief executive officers focus on size and scale, organization and delegation, short-term goals, the efficiency of means, money and markets, customers, personnel and labor. By contrast, chief mission officers focus on purpose, the long term, the integrity of ends and means, the quality of programs and services, student success, and faculty as partners in a moral enterprise.
The faculty is the guardian of academic standards. The curriculum is a covenant in fulfillment of the mission for student learning. This requires a focus on students, third-party quality reviews, and faculty as partners in governance and leadership. These roles require preparation and continued learning.
The three parties to academic governance constitute a system that is intended to support academic freedom — the freedom to inquire, imagine and innovate, in fulfillment of missions for teaching, research and service.
Dr. Robert A. Scott is president emeritus of Adelphi University and the author of “How University Boards Work.”
