Strengthening Scholarship
By Judith C. Areen
As part of this year’s focus on scholarship as well as service, and in keeping with the AALS mission of serving as the learned society for legal academics, the Executive Committee has established a new standing committee of the Association devoted entirely to research. Chaired this year by Dean Lauren Robel of Indiana University-Bloomington, the Committee includes Alison Grey Anderson (UCLA), Marina Angel (Temple), Bryant Garth (Dean, Southwestern), S. Blair Kauffman (Yale), Kenneth W. Mack (Harvard), Joyce Sterling (Denver), Frank Wu (Dean, Wayne State), and Albert Yoon (Northwestern).
The Committee is already hard at work on two projects intended to stimulate additional research on legal education and the legal profession. First, they are compiling a bibliography of significant scholarship on legal education and the profession that will be made available to members of AALS. Second, they are preparing a list of significant questions concerning legal education and the profession on which research is needed. If you have suggestions for either project, you are invited to send them directly to a member of the Committee.
Another change, adopted by the Executive Committee, has been to give priority in scheduling to sections that select speakers for their program at the Annual Meeting, using peer review of their abstracts or papers. The goal is to make the Meeting an even more effective showcase for innovative research.
Academic freedom and tenure have long been considered necessary conditions for good scholarship to be produced. As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire: The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.1
I thought you would find it of interest to know, therefore, that a recent survey of Americans’ views of higher education indicates that support for academic freedom and tenure is not widely shared. A working paper entitled Americans’ Views of Political Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom by Neil Gross (Harvard Department of Sociology) and Solon Simmons (George Mason Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution), which summarizes the survey results, was presented June 8, 2006, at a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).2
The survey was undertaken to “assess the extent to which conservative critiques of the professoriate inform American public opinion as well as to understand how Americans feel about academic freedom and tenure.”3
Some of the results are encouraging. Most Americans are reasonably confident about U.S. higher education with 41.6 percent expressing a lot of confidence. Although the percentage may not at first sound very high, it compares favorably to the standing of other institutions: The only institution in America in which people reported more confidence on the survey was the military (53.9 percent).
Of more concern are the data on tenure. Only 55 percent of the respondents to the survey had heard of tenure for professors. (Those who had not were read a short definition.4) Although a strong majority of the respondents (76.6 percent) agreed that tenure is “a good way to reward accomplished professors,”5 62.6 percent believed that public universities should be able to dismiss professors who join radical political organizations like the communist party, and 57 percent believed that “there’s no room in the university for professors who defend the actions of Islamic militants.”6
At the same time, there is firm public opposition to government control: 80.4 percent of the respondents said the best way to ensure academic excellence is to make sure politicians do not interfere with research in colleges and universities, and 79.4 percent disagree with having the government control what is taught in the college classroom.
Finally, 60 percent said professors should spend more time teaching and less time doing research. The results reported in the paper need to be placed in context. They are based on only one telephone survey. Nonetheless, they suggest that we academics have done a fairly poor job of explaining either the value of scholarship or the relationship between tenure, academic freedom and effective teaching and research.
1 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957).
2AAUP Press Release, June 8, 2006, http://www,aaup.org/newsroom/press/2006/peceptions.htm contains a link to the paper in PDF format.
3Working Paper at 3.
4Unfortunately, the definition did not suggest that there were standards that had to be met to earn tenure nor was any link made to scholarship. The definition provided was:
Let me give you a definition of tenure. In most American colleges and universities, professors are eligible for permanent or continuous appointments after a probationary period of about seven years. These appointments are called tenure, and once tenure is granted, professors usually can be dismissed only for serious misconduct or incompetence.
5 Working Paper at 13.
6Id. At 14.