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Schools

KSU Lecture Highlights "Academic Freedom" Controversies

Dr. Hugh Hudson addresses conflicts and criticisms facing modern higher education.

“Education is an ongoing debate,” Dr. Hugh Hudson said during a lecture Thursday at . “We know that, but have we taught the community?”

Hudson serves as the Chair of the Department of History at Georgia State University and Executive Secretary of the Georgia Conference of American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The lecture, entitled “Academic Freedom: What it Means - Why it Matters” is the first in a series to be held on the topic at KSU. A lecture about academic freedom pertaining to the sciences is currently scheduled for April 4.

The lecture series comes in the wake of Dr. Timothy Chandler’s decision to of Kennesaw State after a number of articles published in The Marietta Daily Journal criticized the nominee for his previous academic work, primarily a 1998 Journal of Higher Education article entitled “Beyond Boyer’s ‘Scholarship Reconsidered.’”

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The matter of Chandler's alleged "Marxist" and anti-American views sparked controversy locally; even Rep. Phil Gingrey weighed in on the issue during a Tuesday.

"We love the university, but it needs to, I think, in its curriculum, reflect the values of the people in Georgia, in northwest Georgia," said Gingrey. "Thank goodness this professor, Dr. Chandler is it, is staying put."

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But according to Hudson, the protection of academic faculty to "espouse highly controversial and unpopular views is an essential social responsibility of universities and colleges."

“There are current threats to academic freedom, and those have intensified with the rapid growth of new media and internet connectivity,” said Hudson, noting that the proliferation of electronic media has made it easier for “talk show hosts, bloggers and well-funded interest groups” to pressure universities into making administrative decisions.

“Academic freedom to explore significant and controversial questions is an essential precondition to fulfill the academy’s mission of fulfilling students and advancing knowledge,” Hudson said. “Our most important responsibility is to prepare our students to deal with complex issues and to understand those issues well enough to make reasoned judgments.”

“If we fail at that,” Hudson said, “there is better use for this property.”

Hudson criticized both sides of the political spectrum, stating that conservative and liberal activists have played roles in challenging academic freedom for professors across the nation. “It is inevitable that students encounter ideas, books and people that challenge their preconceived ideas and beliefs,” he said. “That confrontation produces tension between the faculty’s freedom to teach individually and collectively, and the student’s freedom to form independent judgments.”

“Uncomfortable tension is essential if students are to acquire the skills of critical independence,” Hudson said. “The essence of higher education does not lie in the passive transmission of knowledge, but in the inculcation of mature independence of mind.”

“There is always a potentially infinite number of competing perspectives that can arguably be deemed relevant,” he said. “The very idea of balance and neutrality is close to incoherent. This call now for balance actually refers to a dislike of the interpretation being offered, and in reality, a demand that a particular viewpoint prevail on campus.”

Hudson said colleges and universities house professors of sharply differing views, and that universities should “engage in the quest for truth” as opposed to accepting and promoting a single perspective as “truthful.” He said that professors should be free to examine and test all facts and ideas, including ones that students, faculty and other members of the community may find “unpleasant,” “distasteful” or “even erroneous.”

“Can you imagine how boring it is for students to watch cowards quiver and refuse to debate?” Hudson asked the audience. “We at the university are fully aware that recent challenges to professors' freedom in the classroom have been advanced to further particular and dangerous political agendas. These calls for the regulation of power in education are almost always appeals to the coercive powers of the state. These efforts to force a political agenda on the universities is a serious menace to American freedom.”

“Education cannot strive in an atmosphere of state-encouraged suspicion and surveillance,” Hudson said. He then listed a set of procedural safeguards proposed by the AAUP, including implementing sound and fair policies and procedures and professional reviews to “deter political intrusions in routine personnel processes.”

Hudson also encouraged professors to make “dispassionate reviews” under “passionate circumstances,” and said that academic personnel procedures should be conducted “free of undue political restraints.”

“Controversy exists on campus,” Hudson said. “The purpose of the university is to make people uncomfortable. Moscow State University had very little controversy. We have a choice. We can become Moscow State University, and allow political pressures, either from within or from (outside) the university, to limit the absolutely essential debate and discussion that is at the core of higher education, or we can resist.”

“Kennesaw State University does not belong to the board of regents,” said Hudson. “Kennesaw State University does not belong to President Papp. Kennesaw State University does not belong to me. Kennesaw State University belongs to the citizens of the state of Georgia, and we as faculty have a responsibility to protect that university from any force, inside or outside, that would inhibit the university from fulfilling its duty.”

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