New book highlights limits to academic freedom in America

She told the press that the only reason she had been fired was for membership in the Communist Party, with no thought as to her abilities, qualifications, or teaching skills.

Davis added that "the way to test the validity of 'bourgeois democratic concepts' such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of thought, is to test their application to suppressed peoples".

In the second chapter, Gordon addresses the ground-breaking theory of Alexander Meiklejohn, the influential American philosopher and staunch free speech advocate.

Meiklejohn's view on free speech was used in the famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan to vindicate the newspaper against the Alabama police commissioner.

Meiklejohn — fired from Amherst College and the University of Wisconsin for his progressive views — believed that political speech should never be suppressed.

However, he held anti-liberal views on academic freedom and liberal education, arguing that American universities did not prioritise freedom of expression.

Instead, Meiklejohn — who was deeply influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas on education — believed universities should train students to be good, democratic, and enlightened citizens who speak intelligently and rationally about complex political issues rather than simply promoting free speech.

Indoctrinating classrooms

Next, Gordon explores the concept of indoctrination in the classroom and questions whether professors should use these forums as platforms for political activism.

These questions have been the subject of ongoing academic and legal debates since the establishment of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915.

The AAUP founders cautioned against indoctrination in the classroom and implemented what Gordon calls an "anti-political orthodoxy." 

According to Gordon, German sociologist Max Weber, among the most influential theorists of modern Western society, was a great supporter of the anti-political orthodoxy view.

Weber, who expanded on the connection between academic research and political engagement, felt that taking a practical political stance was one thing, but analysing political structures and party positions was quite another.

Gordon says Weber emphasised professional integrity, not universal morality. He did not want to trivialise morality but rather to reject the suggestion that moral and political choices are predetermined, as it "robs the human image of the element of freedom".

Another thinker Gordon considers is the American philosopher Arthur Lovejoy, who was president of the American Philosophical Association in the 1920s and recognised that the role of a philosopher is not to dictate or preach.

Lovejoy understood that philosophy was no longer based on absolute consensus but rather on comparing different answers to a specific question.

He also agreed with Weber that a professor's job is not to enlighten or "edify" others but to introduce them to multiple viewpoints on a particular problem so that they can make their own minds up, given all the arguments.

An expanding remit

After the 1960s, the concept of academic freedom shifted from the intersection of academia and politics to a broader understanding of freedom, particularly for marginalised groups.

The first Black Studies programme commenced at Oakland's public Merritt College in 1968. Similar programmes sprang up across American campuses, including Mexican American Studies and Women's Studies.

Gordon explores postmodernist philosophy and its significant contribution to the concept of academic freedom by discussing Michel Foucault's argument that "academic discourse is intrinsically political."

While Weber and Lovejoy saw politics as based on political parties and conflict, Foucault saw academic discourse as "regimes" that shape power dynamics.

The French philosopher's unique approach allowed for a deeper analysis of the issue.

More than academic freedom, his work was about the unconscious implications of academic discourse and the notion of political advocacy in the classroom. 

The author then looks at the polarisation of scholarly debates in recent years, particularly the right-wing/left-wing political clash.

Gordon feels that this polarisation may stem, at least in part, from the personal experiences of certain academics who renounced their old beliefs.

As they sought to "purge themselves" of their old ideologies, they helped shape the "rhetoric of denunciation" that still prevails today within American academia.

David Horowitz was one such example.

A prominent intellectual in the New Left movement during the 1960s and 70s, whose book Corporations and the Cold War discussed the influence of corporate ideology on politics, Horowitz shifted significantly to the far right in the 1980s.

In his 1996 memoir Radical Son, he said: "More Marxists could be found on the faculties of American colleges than in the entire former Communist bloc. Radical politics had become the intellectual currency of academic thought."

A Bill of Rights

In 2003, he headed a campaign to advocate for an Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) to protect students from indoctrinating professors.

In 2007, Ward Churchill, a tenured professor and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, was fired for plagiarism over his writing about the US government's involvement in the genocide of Native Americans.

The extent of plagiarism in Churchill's work was never determined, nor were his points around freedom of expression and academic freedom addressed, and it was quickly used as a case study in the ideological debate, including by Horowitz.

Gordon asks whether Churchill was targeted due to his race, political affiliation, or comments about the US government's deliberate infection of indigenous communities with smallpox.

The case is "an index of the general degradation of the discussion of academic freedom in our time," he says.  

In 2005, a House Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom conducted an investigation into "the state of liberty and genuine intellectual diversity" in Pennsylvania's public universities. Under consideration was Horowitz's ABOR.

Freedom for all (except them)

Gordon recalls how English professor Cary Nelson, a former president of the AAUP, went from opposing the ABOR to opposing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

BDS is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel.

Universities were primary BDS targets, said Nelson, "because faculty and students can become passionate about justice, sometimes without adequate knowledge about the facts and consequences".

As Horowitz's chief adversary during the ABOR campaign, Nelson viewed political activism by professors in fields such as women's studies and postcolonial studies as aligned with the prevailing disciplinary consensus.

But as a prominent critic of the BDS movement, Nelson changed his position. Extreme anti-Zionism was now negatively impacting the systems, laws, and ideals he once defended.

Gordon concludes the chapter with the case of Stephen Salaita, an American lecturer of Arab descent who was denied a position at the University of Illinois in 2014 due to his tweets criticising Israeli policy during the Gaza War that year.

Nelson waded in on the Salaita affair. For him, there should be no restrictions on political activism and advocacy so long as it opposes capitalism and racism. Yet when Israel was targeted, he decried the politicisation of the classroom. 

Boycott Syndrome

Gordon looks in more detail at the 2004 origins and impact of the BDS movement, which only gained traction in American universities after being endorsed by the American Studies Association in 2014.

Advocates of BDS have since promoted several boycott campaigns, including shutting down study-abroad programmes in Israel. Gordon feels this "strained the concept of academic freedom". 

The response to the BDS movement consisted of a series of counter-boycotts and anti-BDS laws in 35 US states, giving rise to what Gordon calls a widespread "boycott syndrome" within academia.

While the BDS advocates for a boycott of Israel, claiming it represents global injustice, BDS detractors (including Nelson and the AAUP) say universities should prioritise academic exchange and the collective pursuit of knowledge.

As a result, the definition and priorities of academic freedom are lost amid the noise and disagreement.

In lieu of a conclusion

For his final chapter, Gordon opts out of penning a conclusion. Instead, he presents an unpublished speech on academic freedom by Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic and political activist who died in 2003.

Read more: Revisiting the legacy of Edward Said, the voice of the Palestinian cause in the West

Said offers profound and nuanced thoughts on academic freedom that "defy easy classification," says Gordon.

In that speech, Said discusses philosopher and university professor Stanley Fish's view on the activism of renowned intellectual Judith Butler—  a perfect example of a thinker who refuses the distinction between academic research and political activism.

Fish and others, says Said, think that "if we do not separate academics and politics, then nothing prohibits the legislature, in a democratic country, from taking control of the university".

Said argues that embracing Fish's conservative perspective would eradicate social justice activism within universities.

With remarkable sympathy and understanding, he explains that leftist literary critics tend to bring political activism into the classroom because of toxicity in the public sphere.

This was especially so during the presidency of George W. Bush and his administration's 'war on terror'.

However, Said then argues that this approach is wrong. "I myself do not at all believe that either the classroom or the academy as a whole ought to become a site for the immediate or quasi-mediated settlement of sociopolitical problems," he said.

Instead, Said advocates for a depoliticised academic environment to preserve the openness of American universities, disagreeing with Nelson and others who view universities as arms of capitalism.

As a concluding thought to a book that winds its way through a turbulent and tough landscape, Said's thoughts offer the softest of landings, as readers disembark.