The Limits and Non-Limits of Academic Freedom
Academic freedom has limits. It is not a license to break the law, such as engaging in harassment or discrimination, nor to disregard professional duties and responsibilities. It is not a defense against academic dishonesty, libel, or breach of ethical standards.
However, these legal and professional limits do not preclude vigorous debate or sharply negative criticism. Academic staff need not be gentle, nice, or diplomatic in their scholarly activities and expression, so long as they do not violate the law or their professional obligations.
That is why university and college policies mandating a “respectful” or “civil” workplace can pose a threat to academic freedom. These policies often conflate legal obligations prohibiting harassment with a desire for respect or civility. As a result, what were once regarded as matters of comportment are now categorized as the same as actions and behaviours prohibited by law.
It is easy to see how these policies can be used to attack unpopular or unwanted ideas. At Brock University, students and faculty critical of a program funded by the Catholic Church were accused of violating the respectful workplace policy. At Capilano University, in protest against planned program cuts, Professor George Rammell created a satirical sculpture of the University president. The administration ordered the sculpture to be seized and destroyed as it allegedly constituted “personal harassment and intimidation”.
Concerns about “civility” can too easily be used as justification for limiting contentious and divisive teaching, research, and expression. But argument and debate, often pointed and controversial, lie at the heart of the academic mission.
“Some of the very best research may be done by people whose originality takes the form of a sort of divine bloody-mindedness. They preserve their originality by a contempt for others which others are apt to return in kind. Such people, like the historian J.H. Round, often combine their originality with being extremely difficult colleagues, and the temptation to be rid of them can on occasion be extreme. It is because tolerating such people can on occasion be so difficult that the need for an institutional duty to do so can sometimes become so pressing. Yet without such people, some of the greatest advances made in research would never have happened or might have been put off for centuries.” – Conrad Russell, Academic Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 24.
“Freedom is fragile because those who seek its protection are often or invariably the ones who are least sympathetic. Their expressive activities invite attention and oversight because they are offensive, confrontational, and even abusive: they reject the standards the rest of us observe, and that offends our sensibilities. As much as we may disapprove of the content or manner of their expression, that is not reason enough to silence or punish their interventions. Unless and until they cross a threshold of harm that justifies a regulatory response, transgressions that are merely offensive must be tolerated and addressed by other means.” -- Jamie Cameron, “Giving and Taking Offence: Civility, Respect, and Academic Freedom,” (2015) in J. L. Turk (ed.) Academic Freedom in Conflict: The Struggle over Free Speech Rights in the University (Toronto: Lorimer), p. 303.
Further Reading