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CNN commentator Glenn Beck recently went on a tirade over Barack Obama because he is highly educated and compared him to “the only other” higher education president, Woodrow Wilson. The problem Mr. Beck had with professor Wilson was he proposed the League of Nations and created the Federal Reserve System during his presidency. Putting aside the spotty history for a second, this attack by CNN, a major news outlet, is not on an issue but on the class of individuals called professors.
As we start a new academic year, we need to realize many old problems still exist – such as threats to academic freedom — and we must continue to protect ourselves from those who would promote a shutting down of our intellectual enterprise. In this presidential election year, academic freedom and the ability to speak out on important issues of the day is critical to our nation’s health and well-being. Engaging students to think critically about issues without fear of reprisal is a cornerstone to good teaching. Yet, we can expect more attacks like those from Mr. Beck.
Case in point. At Penn State, a conservative student attacked the use of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” in an English writing course on social science issues when the professor asked students to write and analyze the rhetorical arguments made in the movie. The argument is that global warming is only a science topic. In this case, the university administration stood up for the professor. But what about the future?
Closer to home, Binghamton University history professor Donald Quataert resigned from the board of governors of the Institute of Turkish Studies because of pressure from the Turkish government about his comments on the Armenian genocide. And, while University of Buffalo professor and bio-artist Steven Kurtz was exonerated of all accusations of terrorist activity, his struggle to pursue his art took close to four years and a great deal of money. To SUNY’s credit, the University did not pursue any actions against the professors, but that is because we have built a strong faculty governance system backed up by a strong UUP.
As these attacks on our free speech continue, we must work together to develop a common strategy.
One way in which UUP is working to do this is through chapter tenure workshops. The bedrock of academic freedom is our tenure system. The one thing that has protected us in the past has been the concept of tenure. Tenure gives us the protections we need to protect academic freedom in the academy and free speech in the greater community.
Starting this semester, UUP will offer regional meetings for our academic members, and we want to start by putting together tenure workshops. We need to give our new academics every opportunity to gain tenure. That means we must begin as soon as they arrive on campus to help them develop the portfolios and materials they will need to successfully use this procedure.
Only with a strong tenure system — for academics and professionals, full-timers and part-timers, and members in all of our sectors: university centers, hospitals, four-year colleges and tech sector colleges — will we be able to reach SUNY’s potential. I am sure these attacks will continue. But I am just as sure, if we prepare our next generation to meet the challenges to academic freedom, those who would like to shut down the diverse voices of the university will fail.