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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Procedural safeguards are needed to protect academic freedom
Letters to the Editor | 1/22/08
Posted online at 3:41 AM EST on 1/22/08
The intervention of the bodies constituted to preserve the rights of the faculty has been rejected. We appear to be faced with an infringement of academic freedom of speech, which has attracted the attention of two of the country's top intellectual freedom attorneys, as well as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed and organizations interested in the preservation of academic freedom.
It is directly in the interests of students as well that their faculty be reasonably protected from limitations on freedom of expression. It is not in their interests to watch carried out in their own community a mirroring of the kind of erosion of justice and transparency we have seen over the last few years on the large scale in the Department of Justice and in the abrogation of the Constitutional requirement of habeas corpus.
I believe it is this consequence that was at the heart of my colleagues' letter: the possibility that students, fearing an unpredictable system of hidden and arbitrary justice, will not feel free henceforth to register complaints.
The writers of that letter are among my most respected colleagues. I am confident they would not disagree with any point I've made here. I make them only in fear that others may have misinterpreted the force of their letter in the Justice.
- Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG)
It is directly in the interests of students as well that their faculty be reasonably protected from limitations on freedom of expression. It is not in their interests to watch carried out in their own community a mirroring of the kind of erosion of justice and transparency we have seen over the last few years on the large scale in the Department of Justice and in the abrogation of the Constitutional requirement of habeas corpus.
I believe it is this consequence that was at the heart of my colleagues' letter: the possibility that students, fearing an unpredictable system of hidden and arbitrary justice, will not feel free henceforth to register complaints.
The writers of that letter are among my most respected colleagues. I am confident they would not disagree with any point I've made here. I make them only in fear that others may have misinterpreted the force of their letter in the Justice.
- Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG)
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Mary Baine Campbell
posted 1/22/08 @ 10:33 AM EST
An editing error (to correct my own lack of clarity) in the first 2 paragraphs of my letter misrepresents the "right" I join the authors of the op-ed on "Harassment policy" in defending. (Continued…)
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