Panel to address academic freedom

John Galliher encourages his peace studies and sociology students to participate in political discussion in and outside of the classroom.

But when Galliher, an MU professor of sociology and director of the peace studies department, saw that conservative pundit David Horowitz had accused him in his magazine of forcing students to attend anti-war rallies or put their grades at risk, he balked.

“It ruined my day,” Galliher said.

The university conducted an investigation following the publication of the editorial and found no wrongdoing on the part of Galliher.

Academic freedom, Galliher said, is essential to the free exchange of ideas, although he said the definition depends on the area of study.

“If you’re teaching calculus, then the kind of freedoms you need are probably different than the freedoms you need teaching sociology,” he said.

Similar issues to what Galliher encountered will be topics of conversation at a panel discussion and lecture today at MU. The event, part of the Chancellor’s Global Issues Forum and MU’s Difficult Dialogues Initiative, will focus on academic freedom in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

According to the American Association of University Professors’ statement on academic freedom, teachers must be allowed to freely discuss topics related to their courses. To inhibit discussion, it says, especially discussion of controversial topics, is to inhibit academic inquiry.

Roger Worthington, director of the dialogue initiative, agrees.

“Free inquiry is threatened without the guarantee of academic freedom,” he said. “It is critical for institutions to teach individuals to express their ideas in ways that exhibit respect and tolerance for differences and to avoid behavior that is insulting, demeaning or aggressive.”

Worthington said the dialogue initiative was developed when the university learned from an internal diversity study that religious harassment and intolerance were critical issues at MU.

Robert O’Neil, who will give a half-hour lecture before the panel discussion, is optimistic about the academic climate in the U.S. .

O’Neil is the director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia.

“I think the situation is much less threatening or intrusive than most of us would have feared in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks,” O’Neil said.

During the Vietnam era, however, O’Neil said MU was more severely affected than most universities by administrative backlash. He said the UM System Board of Curators required all faculty members who restructured their courses following the invasion of Cambodia to provide information on the changes.

“I am not aware of anything comparable in Missouri in the last five years,” O’Neil said.

One MU professor, Bill Wickersham, has dealt with issues of academic freedom in the past. A parks and recreation professor, Wickersham joined a student demonstration on Francis Quadrangle on May 11, 1970. Demonstrators demanded the university take a position on the Vietnam War, thethen recent Kent State shootings and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Wickersham, returning from a meeting in Washington, D.C., found several of the students from one of his honors classes blocking the door of the chancellor’s office. The chancellor, Wickersham said, refused to meet with them, instead having the students forcibly removed.

“When I saw what the chancellor was doing with my students, I knew he was asking for trouble,” Wickersham said. “When there’s a small fire, you don’t throw gas on it.”

University officials called the Columbia police, and several of the demonstrators, including Wickersham, were arrested. At the time, Wickersham was on a terminal contract for what he said were political reasons. Wickersham was rehired by MU in the ‘90s as a peace studies professor.

Galliher said that although infringement of academic freedom is a problem that dates back “at least 100 years and probably more,” he believes the American public has lost patience in the years since Sept. 11 and is more willing to accept limits on academic freedom.

However, O’Neil said, it is nearly impossible to predict where the academic community is headed, because public opinion of legislation that would inhibit academic freedom “varies almost from day to day.”

Vicky Riback Wilson, former member of the Missouri House of Representatives and a panel member at the event, said it would not be impossible for the state to enact legislation curtailing academic freedom.

“It can be done through the use of funding or it can be done by attempting to control decisions that are made on campus,” Riback Wilson said. “Academic freedom is a pretty broad category and term, so it might be anything from dictating what has to be taught to attempting to punish individuals on campus.”