We need a new interpretation of academic freedom

Academe

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 10-15

  Dworkin, Ronald ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0040518872     PISSN: 01902946     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/40251473     Document Type: Article

References (4)

1. I mean interpreting the social institution of academic freedom, not just identifying how far the law (including, in America, the Constitution) defines and protects that social institution, though the former is pertinent to the latter. There is, so far as I know, no law against the donor of an academic chair reserving the right to name its holders; but that would violate academic freedom. Nor is academic freedom the same as wise academic policy. It might be silly for a university English department to turn itself entirely over to a trendy new form of criticism. But it would be a violation of academic freedom for the legislature to forbid this.
2. For a description of ethical individualism (though not under that name) see my Foundations of Liberal Equality in the Tanner Foundation Lecture Series, Volume XI, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1990.
3. See my book, Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia and Individual Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1993.
4. A lower court in California subsequently invalidated the Stanford code as violating a state statute forbidding universities to impose stricter speech regulations than governments could impose. See "Court Over-turns Stanford University Code Barring Bigoted Speech," New York Times, March 1, 1995, Section B., Page 8.