Law Commons^™

Reflecting On Academic Freedom Through Fiction: A Theatrical Exploration Of The Blurry Contours Of The Freedom To Teach, Julie Paquin, Maude Choko

The Qualitative Report

This article aims at exploring the contribution that creative forms of research can make to the study of a little-known aspect of academic freedom in the Canadian context – academic freedom in curriculum development. It seeks to address the methodological challenge posed by research on academic freedom, that is, the fact that any academic writing on this topic necessarily draws initially, though not exclusively, from the researchers’ own experiences and perspectives. The article brings to life a fictional faculty meeting, during which questions about academic freedom in teaching are discussed. Although this meeting is the product of our imagination, its …

The Intersection Of Academic Freedom And Trigger Warnings, Ashleigh Maldonado

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

The purpose of this policy brief is to explore the intersection of academic freedom and trigger warnings. The author argues that the vague language within academic freedom policies and the blurred lines between judicial jurisdiction over first amendment rights and institutional jurisdiction over academic freedom policies sets the stage for future limitations on teachers’ rights within the classroom. Te author also argues that while much attention is given to the academic freedoms of instructors, more attention should be afforded to the academic freedoms of students when considering their requests for trigger warnings.

Campus Free Speech In The Mirror Of Rising Anti-Semitism, Harry G. Hutchison

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Is Free Speech An Academic Value? Is Academic Freedom A Constitutional Value?, Daniel Gordon

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Culture Wars On Campus: Academic Freedom, The First Amendment, And Partisan Outrage In Polarized Times, Jason M. Shepard, Kathleen B. Culver

San Diego Law Review

After a California community college professor called the election of President Donald Trump an “act of terrorism” in her classroom the week after the vote, a student-recorded viral video sparked a national conservative media firestorm. Critics said the professor should be fired for outrageous liberal bias, while supporters defended her comments as being protected by academic freedom and the First Amendment. The student, meanwhile, was suspended for his unauthorized recording while defenders decried his punishment as evidence of anti-conservative discrimination and harassment. By examining tensions between faculty and student speech rights, the use of technologies to take ideological disagreements viral …

Professional Standards And The First Amendment In Higher Education: When Institutional Academic Freedom Collides With Student Speech Rights, Clay Calvert

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Using the decisions in Keefe, Oyama and Tatro as analytical springboards, this Article examines rising tensions between institutional academic freedom and the First Amendment speech rights of college students. Specifically, the friction addressed here occurs when universities enforce external professional standards on students within their curricula. Initially, Part I provides a primer on institutional academic freedom. Part II then contrasts the vastly deferential Hazelwood approach to professional-standards disputes embraced by the Eighth Circuit in Keefe with the somewhat more rigorous ones adopted by the Ninth Circuit in Oyama and Minnesota’s Supreme Court in Tatro.

Part III then …

Student Protests And Academic Freedom In An Age Of #Blacklivesmatter, Philip Lee

Journal Articles

Student activism for racial equity and inclusion is on a historic rise on college and university campuses across the country. Students are reminding us that Black lives matter. They are bringing attention to the ways in which the normal operation of the legal system creates racial and other inequalities. They are critiquing the ways in which their experiences and perspectives are pushed to the margins in classrooms, on campuses, and in society.

In urging for university policies that allow for such activism to be moments of teaching and learning for all involved, I argue in this Article that student academic …

Student Protests And Academic Freedom In An Age Of #Blacklivesmatter, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Student activism has been part of the fabric of American higher education since the eighteenth century. Indeed, some scholars have called it "as American as apple pie." From Harvard's "Great Butter Rebellion" in 1766 when students pushed for better food to the multicultural movement of today when students have demanded increased diversity in student, staff, faculty, and curriculum, students have long pressed to have their voices heard. Continuing in this tradition, we now live in an age of student activists who, by organizing through social media, are getting more people involved in political conversations and causes than would otherwise …

A Contract Theory Of Academic Freedom, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Academic freedom is central to the core role of professors in a free society. Yet, current First Amendment protections exist to protect academic institutions, not the academics themselves. For example, in Urofsky v. Gilmore, six professors employed by various public colleges and universities in Virginia challenged a law restricting state employees from accessing sexually explicit material on computers owned or leased by the state. The professors claimed, in part, that such a restriction was in violation of their First Amendment academic freedom rights to conduct scholarly research. The Fourth Circuit upheld the law and noted that “to the …

Individual Academic Freedom: An Ordinary Concern Of The First Amendment, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.

There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court's customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same …

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Academic Freedom In Urofsky's Wake: Post September 11 Remarks On "Who Owns Academic Freedom?", Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

No abstract provided.

Reviewing Joan Delfattore's Knowledge In The Making, Suzanne Corriell

Law Faculty Publications

A book review of Joan DelFattore's Knowledge in the Making.

Opportunistic Evolution: How State Legislation Is Seeking To Redefine Academic Freedom To Permit Intelligent Design In The Classroom, Crystal Canterbury

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Neo-Orthodoxy In Academic Freedom, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This review essay analyzes two recent books that advance neo-orthodox theories of academic freedom: Matthew Finkin and Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom, and Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time. Both books develop principles articulated in the American Association of University Professors 1915 Declaration, which emphasize the role of faculty in advancing knowledge and the need to insulate professional evaluation of academic work from lay, political interference. This review essay defends the return to protection of the scholarly search for truth as the touchstone of academic freedom, offers critiques of the authors’ …

Government As Educator: A New Understanding Of First Amendment Protection Of Academic Freedom And Governance, Judith C. Areen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the Supreme Court held that statements made pursuant to the official duties of public employees are not shielded by the First Amendment from employer discipline, despite a warning from three dissenting justices that the holding could "imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public college and universities." This article responds to the invitation in Garcetti to identify constitutional interests that support academic freedom and that are not fully accounted for by public-employee speech jurisprudence. It also argues that, contrary to common understanding, academic freedom is about more than faculty research and …

Surfing Past The Pall Of Orthodoxy: Why The First Amendment Virtually Guarantees Online Law School Graduates Will Breach The Aba Accreditation Barrier, Nicholas C. Dranias

ExpressO

The impact of the constitutional dilemma created by the ABA’s aversion to Internet schooling is widespread. Currently, 18 states and 2 U.S. territories restrict bar exam eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, 29 states and 1 U.S. territory restrict admission to practice on motion to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in ultimately failed efforts to strike down bar admission rules that restrict eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, none has challenged the ABA-accreditation requirement based on the First Amendment’s prohibition on media discrimination. This Article makes that case.

Despite accelerating technological …

Institutional Academic Freedom Or Autonomy Grounded Upon The First Amendment: A Jurisprudential Mirage, Richard H. Hiers

UF Law Faculty Publications

In recent decades, several federal judges and Supreme Court Justices have stated that, at some time or another in the past, the Court determined that public universities or their professional schools are entitled to institutional academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) under the First Amendment. Notwithstanding the views of many learned commentators, the Court has never so held. Concurring opinions and dicta do not constitute Constitutional law. This article traces the series of misattributions, misreadings and other errors that have contributed to the present peculiar state of confusion in regard to these matters.

Academic Freedom On The Rack: Stretching Academic Freedom Beyond Its Constitutional Limits In Fair V. Rumsfeld, Rory Thomas Gray

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Three Versions Of Nonsense, Paul Campos

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bureaucracy And Distrust: Germaneness And The Paradoxes Of The Academic Freedom Doctrine, Alan K. Chen

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Academic Freedom, Larry Alexander

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Academic Freedom: Disciplinary Lessons From Hogwarts, Emily M. Calhoun

Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Bias, "Balance," And Beyond: New Threats To Academic Freedom, Robert M. O'Neil

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is There A Right To Academic Freedom?, Frederick Schauer

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Academic Freedom After Grutter: Getting Real About The "Four Freedoms" Of A University, J. Peter Byrne

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Academic Freedom After Grutter: Getting Real About The "Four Freedoms" Of A University, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger represents a high-water mark for the recognition and influence of constitutional academic freedom. The Court there relied, gingerly perhaps, on constitutional academic freedom, understood as some autonomy for university decision making on matters of core academic concern, to provide a compelling interest adequate to uphold flexible racial preferences in university admissions. Now that the dust has settled from direct import of the decision for affirmative action in admissions, it is important to consider what role constitutional academic freedom, as a working constitutional doctrine, should or may play within current disputes about higher …

The Promise And Precondition Of Educational Autonomy, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part One of this Essay defends the Court's [Grutter] analysis. The thesis here is a simple one: Universities should have a zone of freedom in which to conduct their academic affairs because they are better at making choices about educational matters than are generalist courts. This is the position I took, both in the Sixth Circuit and in the Supreme Court, as the chief counsel to the amicus deans of many of the nation's leading private law schools in Grutter. Academic freedom has become something of a pariah concept; indeed, our amicus brief contained the only substantial discussion, let alone …

Academic Freedom In Urofsky's Wake: Post September 11 Remarks On "Who Owns Academic Freedom?", Doug Rendleman

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.