Academic Freedom Is Not “Anything Goes”

The Ward Churchill case is the most talked-about case involving a college professor in many years. What it boils down to is whether a professor’s academic freedom to say whatever he thinks trumps a university’s interest in upholding standards of academic integrity.

In his recent decision denying Churchill’s demand for reinstatement at the University of Colorado, Judge Larry Naves ruled that the university is entitled to keep someone it has found to be an academic fraud off its faculty. I believe that is the appropriate resolution of the supposed conflict between academic freedom and academic integrity.

The facts of the case are pretty well known, but I’ll briefly state them.

Churchill, head of Colorado’s ethnic studies department, wrote an essay following the 9/11 attacks in which he made the incendiary claim that the people killed in the World Trade Centers deserved their fate because they were “little Eichmanns”—a reference to Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann who was responsible for sending many thousands of Jews to death camps.

Few people paid any attention to that essay until 2005, when Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College. Curious about his background, some Hamilton conservatives uncovered the essay and began publicizing it. The college cancelled his talk but the wildfire over Churchill’s comments was inextinguishable. Many Coloradans called for Churchill’s immediate firing, but the university would not do so, stating that his statements were protected by academic freedom.

The university also announced, however, that it would undertake an investigation of Churchill’s academic record. If the investigation revealed academic misconduct, he could be penalized or fired for that.

Why investigate Churchill’s record, though? Was it just a “fishing expedition” looking for any possible grounds to fire the unpopular professor for speaking his mind? No. In fact, there had been allegations of plagiarism and fraud against Churchill years before, but the university had done nothing about them. Suddenly under intense pressure, it convened a panel of scholars to do what it should have done years before: thoroughly examine Churchill’s record.

The panel reported numerous instances of plagiarism, fabrication, distortion—a pattern and practice of academic fraud. After much deliberation as to the proper course, the Board of Regents voted to fire Churchill in July 2007. That made him a celebrity, much in demand on the speaking circuit, but he did not seek new employment. Instead he filed a lawsuit, seeking to get his job as chairman of the university’s ethnic studies department back.

The six-person jury found that his political views were a “substantial factor” in his firing and was therefore wrongful, but it awarded him only a dollar in damages. Judge Naves then had to decide on the remedy in the case. He refused to grant Churchill’s demand that he be reinstated on the Colorado faculty, stating that it was up to the university to determine its standards and that a court shouldn’t interfere by forcing it to accept a professor it had decided was unfit.

Churchill’s lawyer has promised to appeal, but until we have an appellate court’s opinion, what should we make of the case?

A major fault line in the case is whether the reason why the university undertook its investigation made its action illegitimate. To Churchill defenders such as AAUP president Cary Nelson, the fact that the investigation was triggered by the hostility to his “little Eichmanns” essay meant that he was being punished for his opinions, thus an assault on academic freedom. Nelson argues that the findings of academic misconduct were “fruit of the poisoned tree” and therefore should be thrown out.

Nelson is suggesting an analogy to criminal law’s “exclusionary rule” which prevents evidence obtained from an illegal search or seizure from being introduced in court. The purpose of that rule is to dissuade police from trampling over the Fourth Amendment. There’s much to be said for that, but only in the field of criminal law. Americans have a constitutional right not to have their homes searched without a warrant, but no constitutional right not to have their academic veracity investigated.

Put another way, it does matter whether the police had probable cause to conduct a search, but it should not matter why a school (or individual) decides to look into the scholarship of a professor. Merely because an investigation was undertaken with a supposedly bad motive—disagreement with the professor’s views—that shouldn’t confer immunity on him for academic misconduct.

In fact, there would hardly ever be a detailed investigation of a professor’s academic integrity without the motivation that someone strongly disliked his views. Colorado paid no attention to complaints that Ward Churchill was committing plagiarism and misrepresenting the work of others until the storm over his “little Eichmanns” essay broke. Academic departments are loath to dig into the intellectual honesty of one of their own unless strongly pressed by outsiders.

Consider the case of Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles. His book Arming America won Columbia University’s prestigious Bancroft Prize and he would no doubt still be happily teaching at Emory if it hadn’t been for the fact that some people who disliked his implicit anti-Second Amendment stance began to look hard at the evidence Bellesiles presented for his contention that firearms were very rare in early America. Eventually, those scholars made such a convincing case that evidence in the book was fabricated that Columbia’s Board of Trustees revoked the Bancroft Prize.

Emory convened a committee to investigate the integrity of the book and it concluded that Bellesiles was guilty of “unprofessional and misleading work.” Rather than wait for the axe to fall, Bellesiles resigned.

Shouldn’t he have been protected under academic freedom? His book was only being investigated because some outsiders disliked its anti-gun thesis, so weren’t the results of their investigations “fruit of the poisoned tree”? I think not. Scrutiny of academic work induced by disagreement or even animosity is not a bad thing. It’s necessary if the ground-rules of academic freedom—you must do your own work and be truthful– are to have to have any bite to them.

The rationale for the research university is that faculty members are expected to produce new knowledge. The university takes in huge amounts of government funds and private donations toward that objective. This creates a reciprocal obligation to see that its professors are actually producing knowledge and not committing academic fraud to support their preconceived ideas.

Universities ought to learn a lesson from the Churchill case: carefully investigate the work of candidates for faculty positions and even more so those under consideration for tenure. Appointing one or more senior professors to act as the devil’s advocate and search for evidence of academic fraud could head off costly embarrassments like this.

Academic freedom is important, but a professor who is guilty of academic fraud should no more be allowed to hide behind it than the person who shouts “fire!” in a crowded theatre can hide behind the First Amendment.