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Standards of Academic Freedom
The AFT Higher Education program and policy council, the union’s academic advisory group, developed the following standards for nurturing academic freedom in today’s world. The AFT calls upon the nation’s colleges and universities to commit themselves to the high standards embodied here, and to live by them. We also call upon faculty, instructional staff and the entire academic community to push for the implementation of these standards—supported, wherever possible, by legally binding contract language—and for the expansion of academic freedom protections to all faculty and instructional staff. (A complete copy of this report is available at www.aft.org/higher_ed.)
Teaching
■ The body of faculty and instructional staff at an institution of higher education must have primacy in designing and approving the curriculum, as well as the methods of instruction, in accordance with accepted professional standards.
■ Individual faculty and instructional staff members must have primary responsibility for selecting instructional materials, defining course content and determining the methods of evaluating student performance in their classes—working in concert with their colleagues to ensure coherence of the curriculum and consistency in applying it, and subject to academic standards accepted within the community of scholars.
■ Within the classroom, all faculty and instructional staff are entitled to full freedom to discuss the subject matter of the course, in accordance with prevailing academic standards established within and among the academic community.
■ Faculty and instructional staff are entitled to exercise their professional judgment in presenting and discussing, frankly and forthrightly, controversial material relevant to their teaching subjects and methods.
■ Faculty and instructional staff are entitled to evaluate students in their classes based solely on their assessment of the academic merit of the students’ work in that class. Students need to be confronted with arguments and encouraged to think critically, evaluate unfamiliar points of view, examine the intertwining of ideas across academic disciplines and the relationship of one subject area to others, and be engaged in thinking about the world we all live in.
■ All faculty and instructional staff are entitled to full intellectual property rights in developing and delivering their teaching materials.
Research and publication
■ All faculty, instructional staff and other professionals performing research at the institution are entitled to full freedom in choosing research subjects and methods, subject only to professional and peer-driven standards. They are entitled to full freedom in the publication of their results.
■ Academic integrity in research, however, requires discoveries to be shared and knowledge to be considered primarily as a public good instead of a private possession.
Participation in institutional governance
■ All faculty and instructional staff are entitled to freedom in their institution to participate in governance, whether they are tenured or nontenured, without fear of intimidation or retaliation.
■ Institutions have an obligation to provide appropriate mechanisms of shared governance, time for individuals to participate in them and, in the case of contingent faculty and instructional staff members, appropriate compensation for taking part.
■ All faculty and instructional staff are entitled to participate in decisions affecting educational policy, including the development of curricula and academic programs, the establishment of accountability and outcomes assessment methods and measures, budget development and allocation of resources, and academic and administrative staffing.
■ All faculty and instructional staff are entitled to participation in the accrediting process internal to institutions, within accrediting associations and on accreditation visiting teams.
Freedom in public life
■ Members of the academic community—including all faculty, instructional staff and indeed all workers at the institution—are free to join or form associations and organizations; to organize and work with unions; and to state their views on any topic, subject only to the understanding that they do not speak on behalf of their institutions.
