Academic freedom

Academic Freedom MICHAEL KUBARA University of Lethbridge ABSTRACT: Having survivedthreats from a wide variety of ideologies (isms), religious and seeular, going back to the first commandment, aeademie freedom is again under the gun of ideological fashion (orthodoxy, political correctness), plutocracy and feminism - at least the more extremist wings. The paper offers an analysis and justification of the traditional concept of academic freedom - the discretionary (but limited) rights of academies over a wide range of activities under .~e headings of teaching and research. The justification collects three lines of argument: (a) rights of the competent, (b) institutional benefits of separation of powers, and (e) the implications of fallibilism. Focus then shifts to an analysis and critique of a recent feminist revision of academic freedom. Implementing a common stratagem, freedom gets redefined as duties of affirmativeaction toward women (and minorities). A critique of this revision is sketched. academic freedom, freedom, fights, teaching, research, university, ideology, political correctness, feminism, speech codes. KEYWORDS: Although it has survived attacks by puritanism, fascism, communism, Americanism or Mcarthyism, Catholicism (Curran, 1990), Christian fundamentalism, and every theocratic and nationalistic movement, academic freedom is once again on the defensive, challenged this time by two current ideological fashions - feminism and plutocracy (rule of the investors). This is not to say all feminists or all investors are out to rein in academies; all ism's cover a broad spectrum with left and right wings. Only the more radical wings, both right and left, claim traditional academic freedoms compromise ideological correctness. Sometimes this is done in the now familiar manner of redefirfition: while keeping the phrase academic freedom for its propaganda value it is purged of its content. As we shall see, some academic feminists resort to this time honoured stratagem. Plutocratic politieians, on the other hand, assuming they know best what citizens ought to know, appeal to frugality and investor confidence (and a lower tax rate on investors) and cease funding social services ineluding academic disciplines, emnarking funds for management or hiring administrators who will do so. Even more elegantly (in keeping with free marketism), disciplines are funded by enrolment, knowing only the management subdisciplines will advertise in the Globe andMail. A free market but not free inquiry; liberated women, but not liberated academies. This should not be surprising. History shows - recall the ideological list above particular ideologies are practically irrelevant in the pursuit of political power: the Interchange, Vol. 27/2, 111-123, 1996. ©Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 112 MICHAELKUBARA powerful of all persuasions try to diminish criticism and thus academic freedom they are never quite secure enough. It goes back to the first commandment: "thou shalt have no other gods before thee." What follows is a comparison of traditional and corrected academic freedom and a defence of the liberal (as in liberal education) tradition as best exemplifying the virtues of humility and democracy. The humility comes in two forms: ideological falliblism which not only tolerates but encourages pluralism, and executive falliblism which not only tolerates but encourages honest debate and respects due process. This applies to government at all levels including university government. Tyranny of the executive is due to failure to recognize needs for checks and balances, separation of powers, undoing roadblocks to inquiry, and the decentralization of educational decisions. We need to make government and university administration itself as fool and folly proof as possible- for obvious reasons. Academic freedom is also defended as democratic in the sense of government for the people. Only a presumptuous government would claim it knows best how quality of life is assessed and that it varies directly with income; the people are better served by free inquiry into this and other philosophical and scientific matters. However at the risk of paradox, as we shall see, mere freedom of speech without prior normative (though fallible) commitment, like the unconstrained free market, is as much a force of evil as good. Freedom of speech in general ends where libel, slander, defamation, fraud, and (more controversially) expressions of hatred against rightful ethnic, ideological, and other groups begins. Notice also, the issue is always content of speech, not place, time, or mediam of speech, though it is possible to zone activities out of existence. Robert's rules of order do not violate freedom of speech; nor does this freedom include the right to interrupt a preacher's sermon or a professor's lecture; nor the right campaign for a cause by loudspeaker at 3:00 a.m. However, limitations due to content are harder to justify and very special care should be taken to spell out the liberty limiting principles which are appealed to. For example, exactly what constitutes "expression of hatred;" indeed what is hatred? It will be argued later that the connections between these offenses and harm should be carefully scrutinized. I begin with an analysis of freedom in general and academic freedom in particular. Then three lines of defence are offered for traditional academic freedom. Finally I critique a feminist position. Freedom in General Freedom is the absence of constraint or compulsion. Constraints prevent or limit action; compulsions prevent or limit omission. Constraints and compulsions are doubly relative (a) to activities or systemic clusters of activities (e.g., speech, religion, mobility, and so on); and (b) to agents or classes of agents (e.g., journalists - ACADEMIC FREEDOM 113 freedom of the press, the clergy - freedom of religion, entrepreneurs - the free market, academics - academic freedom_,and so on). "Freedom-from" and"freedom-to," so called negative and positive freedom, are thus aspects of full fledged freedom, which is a triadic relation uniting agents, activities and absent obstacles (MacCallum, 1967). And so freedom is mind dependent because, as Sartre said, absences are mind dependent and as Peirce said, irreducible triadic relations are mind dependent. Freedom is a polycategorial concept, applying to agents, actions, and environments. Agent freedom - free men and women - is primary. Institutions and actions are derivatively free, referring to institutions, situations, or environments in which agents act freely. Thus free countries harbor free people and free action. Of course a country or any polity may also be an institutional agent, a player on the national or international scene. Sovereign states are thus themselves flee agents, regardless of whether their citizens are free. And within a polity, institutions such as universities and the judiciary may be free from executive or other governmental control - they may be autonomous; or they may be controlled in general or in detail. But regardless of institutional autonomy - even if the institution is more or less controlled - universities, again like the judiciary, may be derivatively free if they harbor free agents - academics or judges. Paradoxically, the freedom of an institutional agent has no implications for the freedom of its members and thus no implications for the freedom of an institution as an environment. Compromising institutional autonomy can make individuals within the institution freer; and vice versa. Thus Quebec could become more free sovereign- while the Quebecois became less free - a fear of some minority groups. Many previously autonomous universities were incorporated into macro university systems without affecting the academic freedom of the faculty. Indeed where religious schools were secularized, academic freedom was enhanced. The value ofl~eedom depends on the value of the acfwities it enables. Freedom is not necessarily a good thing, unless the activities enabled by it are necessarily good that is, defined in terms of goodness. In general the ability to do good is necessarily good; the ability to do evil is evil unless it is a concomitant effect of the ability to do sometkdng else the value of which may be outweigh the evil, as in gambling or risk taking of all sorts. Freedom to play in the traffic is bad; because playing in the traffic is a bad risk. Freedom to do research is good because research is a good risk, a good investment. In general, the ability to do what you want may be good or bad depending on the value of what you want. Freedom in general is thus not necessarily good. But necessity and contingency here, like essence and accident, are features of linguist.ie characterization rather than reality. Contingent goods are no worse than necessary goods, though harder to identify. When comparing the value of particular freedoms (not referred to in some covertly evaluative way) look at the value of the correlated activities. Thus as Rousseau would say, a state of nature is without institutional - 114 MICHAEL KUBARA chains, we are bom free; but we readily accept metaphorical chains of all sorts because they enable more valuable opportunities than nature provided. We trade freedom to drive on which ever side of the road we like for the increased chances of getting somewhere. Similarly, we trade freedom to practice our religion with religiosity - thus allowing others to practice less virulent versions of their religions for peace, prosperity, and stability. Ideological purists of all sorts, including some governments, may gain the freedom to intervene in academic pursuits under the guise of fiscal responsibility, ideological correctness or whatever, but the trade off is decreased chances of better information, empirical, theoretical, or evaluative. Freedoms due to the prescribed absence of human constraint are special classes of rights (though that word is sometimes contrasted with freedoms - as in The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms). We tend to reserve the word freedom for rights correlated with negative duties - duties not to do something - especially interference. Persons could be humans or legal persons such as corporations or government agencies. Constitutional freedoms are rights correlated with negative governmental duties of noninterference. The Charter thus creates rights against government but not duties for businesses, families, and private citizens: for example, mobility rights prohibit government from cens~raining interprovincial movement of individuals. It does not create a claim right, entitling individuals to Air Canada tickets. Provincial rights protection acts may create duties against provincial governments as well as other groups and even in~viduals. - Academic Freedom Academic freedom as usually understood means the absence of constraint or compulsion on professors, by the world at large, but more importantly by government, business° university administration, the student body, religious or other ideological organizations, and other professors with respect to reseamh programs and course content, subject to broad limits - which constitute the legal and employment duties of the professoriate. Thus academic freedom is a collection of discretionary rights with respect to the fulfilment of contractual duties. However, different concepts are found in the recent Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Status of Women Committee Bulletin Supplement and in various arguments by the Catholic Church to deny academic freedom in its universities (Curran, 1990). The Status of Women committee seeks to fold affm~ative action for women into academic freedom by focusing on the derivative sense of freedom, construing it analogously to a flee country. A free academy would then protect the rights and freedoms of its constituents. These feminists claim women and other marginalized con~m"eneies have special rights which limit the traditional rights of professors. White male students also have rights which limit professorial rights, but women and the marginalized have even greater rights which impose even greater limits. Thus this conception of freedom is really a new list of duties for academics - ACADEMIC FREEDOM 115 especially white male academics. Catholic universities have argued that real academic freedom is teaching and researching in accord with God's wishes, as interpreted by the Church authorities and thus in accordance with Church doctrine. And we can replace Catholicism with Marxism in those constituencies where it was politically correct: generating Socialist Realism in the arts, Revisionism in History, and so forth. Traditional academic freedom is a negative, not a claim right entitling research funding or publication, although it does include the right to publish based on merits as opposed to conformity to some form of ideological correctness. The limits are generally well understood, but all rights are capable of free ttming, which is one function of common law. Course content must fit calendar descriptions, be compatible with a normal course load, make reasonable assumptions about student background and talent and in general it must.be reasonable, competent, and conscientious, respecting high standards of scholarly integrity, recently spelled out in documents such as CAUT's policy statement on academic integrity. Research must be consistent with general human and animal rights and preserve scholarly integrity. Of course, no one is hired merely to enjoy academic freedom: professors are hired to perform a wide range of duties generally grouped under the heading of Teaching, Research, and Service. Again, academic freedom refers to discretionary rights regarding the exercise of those duties, Justification of Academic Freedom: Three Lines of Argument The Rights of Competence Academic freedom is a species of the more general right of the competent not to be interfered with by the incompetent. This is a right justified by social utility, if any is. Of course it presupposes standards of competence - typically a ~Ph.D for a probationary contract plus five year probationary experience or internship. Given such credentials one would expect a broad spectrum of discretion regarding the exercise of professional responsibility. This is the differentia which distinguishes academic freedom from mere freedom of speech, which has no presumption of competence. Freedom of journalists also presupposes commitment to professional methods and standards. Both presuppose the will to discover and publish the truth or at least rational belief Both are subject to duties against libel, defamation and inciting hatred. Recall that the constitutional varieties of these freedoms create rights only against government agencies who have negative duties of no nmterference. However, arbitral jurisprudence recognizes rights accruing from established practice. And so these idealized rights (moral rights perhaps) may also have some sta~s in positive law. Separation of Powers The traditional defence of such laissez fake fights, (e.g., J.S. Mill's in On Liberty) is that given unrestricted and unregulated competition the best beliefs for the cheapest prices will be produced. However, as is well known, this market model presupposes 116 MICHAEL KUBARA perfect competition - rational producers and consumers - and not mere economic rationality either. It is not at all clear that laissez fake is the best way to get such rational beings. Laissez fake regarding early education, for example, certainly would not. Also, each religious tradition demands commitment to its ideology far in excess of what evidence would justify. Furthermore each overfly or covertly demeans the others and would prohibit them given sufficient political power. And theocracy is always an integral if suppressed component of religion. Religions only argue vehemently for freedom of religion when they have minority status. (Similarly corporations argue for free trade when they enjoy competitive advantage.) Nor would regulation by mere majority rule give us education by the knowledgeable and otherwise competent This justification of academic freedom lies in the Platonic doctrine of separation of powers, remffirmed insightfully by Jefferson and Madison, following Montesquieu.. Without it, democracy is mere majoritarianism, subject to well known tyrannies. Separation of powers within a polity establishes systems of checks and balances which tend to expose mistakes and excesses for self correction. The well known aspects of our political reality include the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government which make law, implement law, and make findings of violation of law by individuals as well as other branches of government. But political reality also includes the press - the fourth estate; today academia has replaced the church as the first estate just as big business has replaced nobility. A modem liberal democracy is much more than majority rule; the majority rules only with respect to generalities. Elected officials have limited powers; they cannot fire irritating judges, journalists, or professors, nor can they replace civil servants for reasons of political or religious affiliation. In a coherent, stable system of government the branches of political reality must be in a political equilibrium akin to Rawls' (1971) reflective equilibrium. Thus in a modern democracy sovereignty is diffused; it is not rule of the people, by the people, where the people are the electorate - that would be ride of referendum, majoritarianism in its rawest form. Each branch of political reality has its peculiar systems of due process, which may be construed as different conceptions of justice; majoritarianism is but a small part of each. (Ravels' two principles hardly qualify as standards of judicial justice. Nor do they apply to just treatment by the press or doing justice to the data.) Judicial processes are themselves defined by statute and common law, as is parliamentary procedure. Good journalism has its procedures; as does good academic research. In these too there may be a place for majoritarianism, but it is a small formal place. Finally, notice that separation of government and business as well as government and the military as well as church and state are variations on this theme. There are well known ways of undermining a system of checks and balances which is crucial for deciding issues on their merits; ways of sneaking one by and nevertheless presenting the illusion of separation of powers. As will be apparent, most are also ways of blocking open, honest inquiry. Here is but a partial list: ACADEMIC FREEDOM 1. 2. 3. 4. 117 Stacking. If one branch (the executive) is responsible for filling positions in another, it appoints lackeys, yes men or women, the insecure (untenured) or the ignorant. Emergency. Most procedures have escape clauses for emergencies, thereby guaranteeing a high frequency of emergencies. Term Positions. Keep them insecure; often justified by appeal to soft funding or the need for an extended extra-contractual probationary period. (Once a candidate's eagerness to play ball is established a permanent position suddenly opens, though advertising is impossible due to emergency.) Information flow. Committee chairs or others meter the flow of information thereby biasing the outcome. Fallibilism A justification for academic freedom may also be provided by the epistemology of C. S. Peiree (1932). The motives to interfere with the press or the academy include self and group interests of all kinds - some of which are justifiable, most not; but it also includes ideological fundamentalism, dogmatic belief, belief held with such fervent conviction that the believer thinks it impossible to be mistaken, that he or she is infallible. As mentioned, religions tend to advocate dogmatic belief, but so do political ideologies. Both can be backward looking - seeing the ideal ideology in some past documents. The first commandment of religious and some extremist secular creeds upon assuming political power is "Thou shalt have no other creeds before you." Thus creed states impose state creeds. But ff we are fallible about everything, stale creeds are never justified, Separation of church and state means that government must be secular, without special privileges for any one religious group or ideological group. Thus for C.S. Peirce the essential faUibilist and anti-fundamentalist, the first principle of logic, the academy and government is Do not block the path of inquiry. Academics, goaded by a motive no more honorable than the need to publish and teach original material seek perfection in the future. For this reason religion is the traditional antagonist of the academy. But seetflar ideological correctness also found a place in the 20th century. First under national socialism, then under communism, then Americanism (or Mcarthyism). But let me hastily add that blocking i n q ~ is one thing, abandoning it and postponing it are yet others. Imagine search and rescue operations, police investigations, scientific experimentation, and even philosophical research. Let me suggest that we would be justified in blocking inquiry only ff infallible, but justified in abandoning inquiry if we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt and justified in postponing if some other hypothesis seemed more probable. And notice the issue is inquiry, not practice. We might eriminalize - and this too comes in degrees - all sorts of activities and still permit inquiry as to whether they are as hannfi~ as alleged. But it would seem that the standards of proof regarding a claim that some activity should be criminalized should be at least as high as the standard required to convict someone 118 MICHAEL KUBARA of committing the crime. It would be incongruous to require proof beyond reasonable doubt that a suspect was guilty when we could only reasonably suspect or wonder if the act he or she was guilty of should be criminally wrong in the first place. Just as punishment should fit the crime, degrees of intolerance should fit not only the alleged magnitude of the wrong but the degree of proof that it is wrong to the extent alleged. If han~ is the measure of wrong, then harms of physical violence are pretty close to being empirically verifiable; emotional harms (offenses) less so and harms of false consciousness or bad ideology even less so; and so on for hatred (desire for harm), incitement of hatred and expressions of hatred. The clear connection between harm and wrong is diminished at an increasing rate, as we move from physical harm to expressions of hatred. Roadblocks to lnquiry Nevertheless, academic freedom, unlike its cousin freedom of the press, remains, in North America, a fragile institution without constitutional or statutory recognition, though it may be legally reco~ized because it is specified in collective agreements the interpretation of which is a matter of law as opposed to fact - or in arbitral jurisprudence if it has become a acknowledged past practice. Even so, as we know, such agreements and practices are overridable by statute. Thus academic freedom is prey to every ideological fashion to hit the electorate's top 40, especially those associated with larger lobby groups such as its traditional adversaries puritanical Christians, Moslems, businessmen, labourers, and women. It is amazing how champions of laissez faire in matters economic have been repressive in matters artistic and academic. Or how those who insist on freedom to compete for increased market share suddenly want protection when their share is being diminished. - A Feminist Conception of Academic Freedom Professors Drakich, Bankier, and Taylor (1994) recently developed a feminist conception of academic freedom and a critique of what they take to be the traditional conception. The authors, claim: As now defined, academic freedom refers to a piece of behaviour of a specific individual that ignores the intersubjeetivity of all persons in the setting. [and] ... conceals the vulnerability of women and other historically excluded groups ... and does not take account of the historic advantages enjoyed by white, heterosexual, able bodied males. (p. 2) The preferred definition of academic freedom advocated in this article is this: a reciprocal right which exists within academic relationships (teacher-student colleagne-coUeague, etc.) ... both parties to any academic relationship have rights to academic freedom, and the exercise of one person's rights must not infringe on the rights of the other ... under such a model we would enjoy a right of academic freedom based on our respect of the academic freedom of others, ACADEMIC FREEDOM 119 through our acknowledgement of the legitimacy of their values and other differences. (Drakieh, Bankier & Taylor, 1994, p. 3)) The traditionalist critique of this might proceed as follows. Traditional academic freedom could not be something independent of social relations, since freedom is ipso facto independence from others who would constrain or compel. There might be such a conception of freedom, but it would be of the same genre as the notion of free wilt as opposed to determinism. Such freedom would not be a right. No one believes this about academic freedom. The standard conception is the freedom of academies while fulfiLhng their employment duties. But the feminists are insistent, claiming traditional academic freedom fails to acknowledge that other members of the university community have rights against professors. Again, if this were so, professors would have no employment duties. Granted, everyone's fights are limited by the right's of others. But the traditional doctrine emphasizes the rights of professors. The femim'st conception redefines freedoms in terms of duties. It has been done before, "being really free is obeying God's laws" and so forth. On this version a professor is really free when he fulfills duties to women and other marginal groups. As mentioned, there is a category shift: we begin by talking about the rights o f academics, and end by talking about rights within the academy. A free academy, like a free country, is one whose constituents are free from various constraints and thus free to act in various ways. No champion of academic freedom denies other member's of the community have fights or that academics also have duties. The point however is to emphasize the rights of academics. The feminist point is to limit those rights. Their general but presumed justification for such a limitation of academic freedom is the interests of women and other marginal groups against male academics. As in all such cases one wonders whether the traditional conception will begin to look attractive to them when they are the dominant group? The substantive question has always been, what are the rights of different groups within the academic community? The new version claims marginalized groups have rights unrecognized in the traditional community. Let us turn to these claims. Limiting Freedom of Males How do these alleged rights limit the academic freedom of males? First, by limiting the ability of male professors to critically evaluate the work of women (and gay and lesbian) students as well as female academics. Men cannot judge women because women have special information: "women's lived experiences within the social forms of consciousness" in relation to "the world directly felt, sensed, responded to" (Drakich, Bankier & Taylor, 1994, p. 2) gives them a tmique data base which must be accommodated in an inclusive university. This thesis is a variation on "it takes one to know one." But if we do not know or understand what it is like to be blind or to have labor pains unless we are blind or in labour, then most of our academic disciplines are shams from anthropology to entomology to physics, The epistemic 120 MICHAELKUBARA status of unique experience is also suspect because merely having an experience is one thing, knowing that you have it and knowing what it is that you are having are quite others. Unique experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge of any sort, let alone systematic knowledge. Another complaint is this: it is no criticism of a university that it is not an omnibus institution; the phrase inclusive university cannot be read to include psychics with unique data bases or crackpot teachers and researchers anymore than academic freedom can: each case must be judged on its merits and judged by other academics, such is the nature of academic due process. If this tends toward conservatism in science and academe generally, so be it. Conservatism is better than having merit subject to fashions of ideological correctness. Emotional Rights The thesis about special information leads to another about the place of emotion. It is claimed that traditional "academic freedom assumes the person is only a minar' for whole people ideas and words evoke slrong emotions ... render people extremely vulnerable ... women and minorities who are not welcomed into the disembodied world of the academy, bring, among other things, consciousness of their emotionality and their vulnerability ... [because] of the hegemony of objectivity over subjectivity ... embedded in the masculinist culture of the university.., the canons o f science as a constitutional practice require the suppression o f the personal ... The masculinist model of discourse is premised on a competitive, confrontational style which seeks to establish/entrench power imbalances without regard for the "other" in the discourse. This model is most clearly illustrated in its concomitant pedagogy which demeans students without regard for the impact on students' sense of themselves in the classroom ... Refusal to acknowledge the predictable emotionality and vulnerability in response to the expression of inhospitable views and behaviour in the academy-- in the classroom, or towards colleagues--is crude incivility. People have deep feelings about their convictions and identities. ~rakich, Bankier & Taylor, 1994, pp. 23) This conveniently forgets that the humanities are part of universities too, literature in particular. But more important, masculine here is defined in terms of evil: the words 'competitive' and 'confrontational' are neutral (there can be too much or too little of competition or confrontation), but the pedagogy of"power seeking, other disregarding and student demeaning" is evil by definition. With this as the essence of the male professoriate, the conclusion is clear. In order to save our youth, our most precious resource, we must rid universities of this evil, this pollution. The feminist model of academic freedom advocates a gender form of ethnic cleansing, reminiscent of Nazis and jews, communists and property owners, Christians and pagans, PQists and Anglophones. Two decades or so ago there was a call to cleanse Canadian universities of Americans (because Canada should be the preserve of British academies?). And in one Philosophy department it was argued this was justified ACADEMIC FREEDOM 121 because American philosophy was competitive, confrontational, and disruptive. This phoenix of an issue has reached a higher order of generality and intensity: it is now argued that not only all American philosophers, or even all male philosophers, but all male academics are competitive, confrontational, and disruptive, and excessively so. We must be careful not to excessively generalize ourselves: the views being assessed are those of s o m e feminists. Of course, it is probably true that s o m e males a r e excessively competitive, confrontational, and even power mongering and demeaning. But so are some females. It is astounding how much of this ideological gender warfare is conducted without regard for quantifiers. Though the fastest, strongest men are faster and stronger than the fastest and strongest women, those women are superior to well over 95% of the male population. Similarly for the most competitive, confrontational, aggressive, ambitious, power mongering, and demeaning men and women, And we might wonder which gender holds the world's records. The truth is that there is more variation within a gender than between genders. The women who are loving mother types are not often found in the professions and if they are, they are as unhappy there as aggressive males would be as house husbands. Who believes that lesbian relations unlike heterosexual ones are without power imbalances: dominance, submission, competent, incompetent, beautiful and not so beautiful, financially dependent, and independent? As for "deep feelings about their convictions and identities" let me say this. Good pedagogy, like good lawyering, is not to be confused with good therapy. Many people need therapy. But it is not the job of teachers, lawyers, accountants, and so on to provide therapy. Despite depth of feeling, many convictions are childish, superstitious, merely fashionable, or otherwise irrational. Yet hurts (physical or emotional) are not necessarily harms; they might be beneficial. "No pain no gain, is often ~ue" and waving it aside as maleness, is not refutation. A hurt-free university, like a hurt free life, is not necessarily beneficial; in both cases it is more likely the painless death of real learning and real growth which needs ideological competition and confrontation. There are problems with both excess and deficiency. A professor need not be Mr. or Ms. Dress up - or any other politically correct model; a good student would prefer the integrity, enthusiasm, idealism, and rigour of even a paradigmaticaUy male anytime. The incompetent need to be informed of this important information. This misconception of academic freedom, designed by a group to promote the interests of women (and as an after-thought, minorities) is an example of ideological gerrymandering. They know very well academic freedom names a hallowed institution, but it is one that is not in keeping with afire-native action or preferential treatment for women (or whomever). So the strategy is to keep the rhetoric but redefine it to encompass preferential treatment. It is a variation on the strategy to ally affarmativeaction not with (wrongful) discrimination but with social justice (rightful discrimination). 122 MICHAEL KUBARA Let me end by emphasizing that nothing said here argues against ~ a t i v e action in general. One obviously rightful form includes special efforts to end wrongful discria~ation against (hannfd to) various groups: racism, antisemitism, sexisn-~ and so on. Ending such discrimination would enable each individual to be judged on his or her merits. However, this must be applied to the distribution of social goods at all levels. It is not enough for jobs to be awarded on the basis of talent if there is unfair opportunity (wrongful discrimination) to acquire the talent. However injustices must be rectified at the level in which they occur. Two wrongs do not make a right. Nietzsche said there is only one Christian and he died on the cross; after that all is lies. The truth is that Jesus was not a Christian let alone a Jesuit or Catholic or Anglican. In the evolution of ideology we first get a prophet, teacher, or thinker (Jesus, Marx) and his or her thought (the gospels, Marx's writings). Then it becomes a movement or ism (Christianity, Marxism). Often it is politicized by a creedorganization (a religion - Catholicism or party - Communist Party). And if effective it creates a creed state (Christendom or the Soviet Union), which then imposes a state creed (Christianity, Communism). Thus political correctness is but another name for ideological correctness which is but another name for orthodoxy of all kinds, secular and sacred, political, and scientific. The examples of Marx-Marxism-Communist Party-Soviet Union, Jesus-Christianity-Catholicism-Christendom may be generalized~ Analogously we must also distinguish any individual feminist writer enjoying freedom of expression and offering her thoughts to the world, feminism, women's lobby groups whose purpose it is to advantage women, and various harassment, and correct speak codes currently being advocated and in some cases implemented. The concern for truth, reason, and intellectual integrity diminishes as we move from ideality to political reality where the main concern is market share - by almost whatever means. Thus we have the fundamental difference between advertising, propaganda, indoctrination on the one hand and philosophical and scientific dialectic on the other. The duties of a loyal party member are not the duties of an academic, Plato was wrong about philosopher-kings. Duties assigned to the two roles should not be united for they are often incompatible, such is the academic commitment to reason and impartiality. Separation of academy and state is as crucial as separation of church and state. When one indulges in political advocacy under the guise of ideological debate, one violates academic freedom. One of the major differences between these is due process: to a party loyalist the best process advances the cause. To a (true) academic, there is no cause except more rational (coherent with confirmed principles and reliable empirical data) belief. Let us not confuse them. ACADEMIC FREEDOM 123 REFERENCES Curran, C.E. (1990). Catholic higher educa•'on, theology and academic freedom. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Drakieh, J., Taylor, M., & Bankier, J. (1994). Academic freedom is the inclusive university. CAUT Bulletin, 41, 2-4. Ha~home, C. & Weiss, P. (F_,ds.).(I 932). Collected Papers of C.S. Pierce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MaeCallum, G.G. (1967). Negative and positive freedom. Philosophical Review, 76, 312-334. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory ofjustice. Cambridge, MA: ~ d University Press. Author's Address: Deparmaent of Philosophy University of Lethbridge Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4