Appeal to Redefine Academic Freedom, Restore Scholarly Discourse, and Codify Pedagogical Malpractice on Campus

Freedom of expression on campus, regardless of content, regardless of how much it hurts, does hurt. It hurts students. It hurts every aspect of our society and outpaces our capacity to heal. The acquisition of knowledge and skills by students is focused on course content. Students learn that what a person says does matter and requires critical evaluation. On campus, what professors teach does matter. The 21st century notion of academic freedom often focuses on the right to express, independent of content or context, and inadvertently fuels the fabrication, teaching and spread of disinformation. It is time to redefine academic freedom, and restore scholarly discourse on campus. It is time to codify professional practice and malpractice in education.

The October 7 massacre shuttered the orthodoxy of academic freedom. More than 150 student organizations at Harvard, Brown, and Columbia, instantly sided with Hamas terrorists. American students identified with inhumane,  ultra-religious, ideology, opposing basic human values and our principles of human rights, freedom, and democracy. Students were preconditioned by what they were taught at the university. They parroted disinformation that was fabricated by faculty and empowered by academic freedom. Seamless access to the global media resulted in the spread of false and unchallenged rhetoric from the campus to society at large. The enormity of this historical flip is expressed by the noble laureate Herta Muller and by many others. In witness to the destructive outcomes of academic disinformation, we are obligated to redefine academic freedom.

We seek policy and terminology that promote the pursuit and advancement of knowledge in education. The Socratic approach taught us to begin by awareness of what we don’t know, followed by inquiry. The following 2000 years validated the scientific methodology that follows inquiry. It is an iterative process that includes research, critical evaluation, discussion, debate, and self-correction, which comprise scholarly discourse. Freedom of inquiry followed by scientific methods resulted in phenomenal progress throughout the realms of human endeavor.

The university’s commitment to free and open inquiry, and “to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the university’s community,” is articulated in the Chicago principles. The initial concept of “complete freedom of speech on all subjects” within the now-obsolete 1902 enclave of scholars, gradually evolved to mean “freedom to discuss any problem,” “freedom to debate and discuss the merits of competing ideas,” and in conclusion: “free and open inquiry” among scholars at the university.  A frank assessment of where we stand today, indicates that universities in the USA have achieved the aims of Academic Freedom defined above. By 1915, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom, concluded that “freedom of inquiry and research” “is almost everywhere so safeguarded that the dangers of its infringement are slight. It (they) may therefore be disregarded in this report.” Let’s pause and acknowledge that when we talk about academic freedom, we are not talking about “freedom of inquiry,” debate, discussion and research. We are talking about something else.

The AAUP 1915 Declaration focused on “Freedom of the teacher,” and explicitly not on freedom of inquiry, or freedom of the student. This is the most concerning application of academic freedom because it codifies the autonomy of the faculty at the expense of the student and the public. It exempts the teacher from critical evaluation and public oversight. Students, subject to the authority of educators, comprise our largest vulnerable population. They value what the teacher says and are at risk for misguidance and indoctrination. It is our duty to “protect” them. Each of millions of teachers cannot be entrusted, free and “protected,” to teach their own version of truth. Hence, course content, like all validated knowledge, must be open to view and debate.

Academic freedom is now commonly invoked by faculty to endorse the fabrication and teaching of ideology and untruths, and the use of the “protected” university campus as a launch pad for dissemination of disinformation to the media. Campus protests post October 7 gave credence to the totalitarian precept that “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth” and the norm. Hence, it is time to acknowledge the historical belief that the word is mightier than the sword. Endorsement of false rhetoric by faculty and its spread to the media is far more destructive than physical force or damage to property. “Protecting” weaponized language, while invoking law and order to combat infractions of time, space and manner, is misguided. Thanks to unchallenged freedom of expression on campus, Hamas achieved in a day what took decades for totalitarian regimes of the past.

The redefinition of academic freedom must consider the transformational changes that occurred between 1902 and 2024. Foremost are: the instant global access to the vast expanse of information and validated knowledge beyond the confines of the university; the pursuit and advancement of knowledge within professional entities throughout society, independent of the university campus; the empowerment of individuals to freely express and be heard in the digital medium; the dissolution of boundaries between classroom, university campus, off campus institutions, and media; the dissolution of boundaries between objective truth, unsubstantiated information, and disinformation propagated in the digital realm, and above all, the overreaching power of the word detached from its source. Hence, academic freedom, as concept and practice knows no boundaries and is potentially harmful. It is time to discard this terminology and establish a professional educational environment where scholarly discourse can thrive.

Our societal problem, for which none of us has a ready solution, is the overwhelming spread of disinformation that undermines every aspect of our society. Our academic problem, which we know how to fix, is that we opened the campus floodgates to disinformation at the expense of students and the public. If we recognize that education is a professional field, just like medicine, our path becomes evident, and entails: application of scientific knowledge to serve human beings, commitment to do no harm, advancement of knowledge, ongoing critical evaluation by self and peers, continual self correction, implementation of a system of checks and balances which includes the concept of malpractice, and establishment of clear boundaries between the educational campus and public space even as the physical boundaries are dissolving. Please reread “in defense of merit in science” and let’s teach and practice scientific methodology on campus. We have a vast expanse of validated knowledge and skills, far more than any student can learn and practice in a lifetime. So let’s focus on our responsibility to enable students to learn what is known and validated. The knowledge is readily accessible, AI can help, and teachers have the authority to make this happen. So let’s act as professionals and enable students to learn what is known.

Defining education as a profession would change our focus towards protecting the student and the public, while enabling educators to curtail disinformation. Phenomenal advances in medicine, spread around the globe, serve to testify that freedom of inquiry can be alive and well within a highly professional field of human endeavor.

Our First Amendment orthodoxy on campus remains a major obstacle to the exercise of scholarly discourse. The individual’s unrestricted freedom to exercise the First and Second Amendments does not extend to professional settings such as the hospital operating room, the airplane cockpit, or the university campus where professional responsibilities take precedence.

Campus protests post October 7 raised the question of how universities should respond to protesters and their rhetoric. Educators have the mandate to transform unsubstantiated rhetoric into evidence-based investigations and debates. The recent failure to challenge untruthful and misguided rhetoric expressed by student protesters on campus, and the failure to educate protesters, are examples of gross pedagogical malpractice which the First Amendment was not intended to protect. The time has come for debates to replace protests on campus. Campus encampments and the burning of police cars are no longer needed for students to be heard or to rationally address the problems that face them. Post October 7, non-violent verbal protesters reached larger audiences than did Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.

Let’s conclude by looking in the mirror. The intrusion of ideology into science and education and its damaging outcomes have been extensively documented and discussed by leading scientists. Moreover, we are now observing the effects of disinformation on students, and the destructive societal outcomes of false rhetoric expressed by faculty and students. Hence, is it time for us reconcile our uncompromising support of free expression on campus, in STEMM, and in academia, no matter the content, no matter how offensive and no matter how much it hurts, with our opposition to the teaching of disinformation and the intrusion to ideology into education, academia, and STEMM? Is it time for us to codify a policy that promotes scholarly discourse and scientific methodology, but bars the fabrication, teaching and dissemination of ideology and disinformation on campus? Is it finally time to protect students and affirm that teaching disinformation is malpractice? is it time to redefine academic freedom?