ACADEMIC FREEDOM

the freedom of teachers and students to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Its basic elements include the freedom of teachers to inquire into any subject that evokes their intellectual concern; to present their findings to their students, colleagues, and others; to publish their data and conclusions without control or censorship; and to teach in the manner they consider professionally appropriate. For students, the basic elements include the freedom to study subjects that concern them and to form conclusions for themselves and express their opinions. According to its proponents, the justification for academic freedom thus defined lies not in the comfort or convenience of teachers and students but in the benefits to society; i.e., the long-term interests of a society are best served when the educational process leads to the advancement of knowledge, and knowledge is best advanced when inquiry is free from restraints by the state, by the church or other institutions, or by special-interest groups. The foundation for academic freedom was laid by the medieval European universities, even though their faculties met periodically to condemn colleagues' writings on religious grounds. Protected by papal bulls and royal charters, the universities became legally self-governing corporations with the freedom to organize their own faculties, control admissions, and establish standards for graduation. Until the 18th century the Roman Catholic church and, in some areas, its Protestant successors, exerted censorship over universities or certain members of their faculties. Similarly, in the 18th and 19th centuries the newly emerged nation-states of Europe constituted the chief threat to universities' autonomy. Professors were subject to governmental authority and were liable to be allowed to teach only what was acceptable to the government in power. Thus began a tension that has continued to the present. Some states permitted or encouraged academic freedom and set an example for subsequent emulation. For example, the University of Leiden in The Netherlands (founded in 1575) provided great freedom from religious and political restraints for its teachers and students. The University of Gttingen in Germany became a beacon of academic freedom in the 18th century, and, with the founding of the University of Berlin in 1811, the basic principles of Lehrfreiheit ("freedom to teach") and Lernfreiheit ("freedom to learn") were firmly established and became the model that inspired universities elsewhere throughout Europe and the Americas. Academic freedom is never unlimited. The general laws of society, including those concerning obscenity, pornography, and libel, apply also to academic discourse and publication. Teachers are freer within than outside their disciplines. The more highly trained teachers are, the more freedom they are likely afforded: university professors tend to be less restricted than elementary-school teachers. Similarly, students usually gain freedom as they move through the academic system. Teachers in small towns can usually expect more interference in their teaching than teachers in large cities. Academic freedom is liable to contract in times of war, economic depression, or political instability. In countries without democratic traditions, academic freedom may be unreliably granted and unevenly distributed. In communist countries, when academic freedom did exist at the university level, it was usually in such fields as mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, linguistics, and archaeology; it was largely absent in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. The collapse of communist rule in eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 allowed the tentative reappearance of academic freedom in many of those countries. Despite its strong traditions of academic freedom, Germany experienced a virtually complete eclipse of such freedom during the period of Nazi rule (1933-45). In the late 20th century, academic freedom seemed strongest in Europe and North America and weakest under various dictatorial regimes in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. While the United States has generally been a bastion of academic freedom, this history has occasionally been marred by state legislatures' requirement of "loyalty" oaths from teachers in efforts to guard against left-wing (and particularly communist) political activities deemed disloyal or subversive of the national interest. The first loyalty oath requirements began during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s they proliferated to an alarming degree; many teachers who refused to take such oaths were dismissed without due process, and freedom of inquiry was seriously hampered. Most such requirements had lapsed by the 1960s, however. In general, the security of academic freedom in the United States has been strongly influenced by Supreme Court interpretations of the constitutional freedoms of speech, press, and assembly.