At a time when liberal teachings on college campuses are under fire, the University of California is considering a change in its nearly 70-year-old academic freedom policy in order to officially protect free discourse in the classroom -- and to bring the policy more in line with reality.
The current policy, which Gayle Binion, chair of the UC faculty Academic Council said had been approved in 1934 when there were fears about "subversives" in the university, requires dispassionate scholarship.
"Where it becomes necessary, in performing this function of a university, to consider political, social or sectarian movements, they are dissected and examined -- not taught, and the conclusion left, with no tipping of the scales,
to the logic of the facts," the current policy says.
But that has never been the reality of the university classroom, Binion said. Earlier this year, UC President Richard Atkinson called the policy outdated and asked the faculty to revise it.
The new policy, drafted by UC Berkeley law Professor Robert Post, an expert on the First Amendment, says that UC is committed to upholding and preserving principles of academic freedom that "guarantee freedom of inquiry and research,
freedom of teaching, and freedom of expression and publication."
The relevant question when it comes to academic freedom, Post said, is competent versus incompetent scholarship, not a dispassionate presentation.
"Of course professors can express their opinions," he said. "Otherwise, what sort of class would it be? But you have to do it in a way that allows students to think for themselves."
The review of the policy came in the aftermath of a nationwide controversy over a UC Berkeley student instructor who warned conservatives not to take his class on Palestinian poetry.
NoIndoctrination.org, which advocates against indoctrination in the classroom, warns that the important safeguards are omitted from the new policy that would prevent professors from using the classroom as a pulpit.
"For the UC system to change the academic freedom statement in a way that appears to condone politicization and indoctrination in the classroom seems to us nothing short of scandalous," said Luann Wright, founder and president of the San Diego-based Web site, in a letter to the Academic Senate.
But Binion said the new policy was right in line with other universities, adding that the faculty conduct code protected students from propaganda in the classroom, such as a chemistry professor spending a week talking about the war in Iraq.
"People have academic freedom provided that they are acting in a realm where they have expertise and they are acting competently and responsibly," she said.
Professors have come under fire in the past few years for their teachings. In addition to Wright's Web site, which allows students to post complaints anonymously accusing their professors of political bias, Middle East Forum in Philadelphia launched the Campus Watch Web site last year, which criticized colleges for preaching anti-Israel rhetoric on Palestinians and Islam.
The proposed policy will be considered by the 18-member Academic Council at UC Berkeley today and, if approved, goes to the full Academic Assembly in July.
President Atkinson has final say over the policy.