Standing up for academic freedom share Academic freedom: What is it? What does it protect? And where is the line between free speech and abuse?
These are some of the questions the Portland State Faculty Senate set out to answer in a resolution passed unanimously on March 1.
“Academic freedom is to the university what the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly are to democracy,” the resolution reads. “As with the abuse of democratic rights, carelessness in the exercise of academic freedom can undermine, stifle, and annihilate academic freedom itself.”
“As Faculty, we must be thoughtful in our exercise of academic freedom and guard against its cynical abuse that can take the form of bullying and intimidation,” the resolution continues. “This kind of abuse of academic freedom destroys academic freedom by eroding the trust that makes possible open dialogue, which is a central tenet in university intellectual life as well as in the practice of participatory democracy more broadly.”