I agree that ND is not in this case violating any principle of academic freedom. But I don't at all agree with the idea that somehow the phrase "academic freedom" must now be inextricably tied up with Horowitz's ludicrous recent scam. The phrase has a much longer history than that -- at least as far back as 1925, when a conference on that topic was held on that topic (sponsored, iirc, by the AAUP). Far from defending it, Horowitz has tried to make a mockery of the phrase & the notion it describes, and I would strongly resist any attempt to give him the sort of ownership of them that this post implies.

As I understand it, the basic idea of academic freedom is that a professor is free to pursue any area of inquiry and express any viewpoint he/she wishes, and need not fear interference from department chairs, administrators, etc.

To play Devil's advocate, then, if it could be proven that universities were biased against conservatives in their hiring practices, wouldn't that be counter to academic freedom? And since there's no real doubt that most departments at most universities are dominated by liberals, either there's some kind of self-selection going on or there's bias in hiring.

Horowitz may be annoying, but you can't deny that memories of his assault on left-wing bias in the classroom are conjured anytime "academic freedom" is mentioned in public, especially in the context of a liberal-conservative face-off.

Adam: Yes, that's exactly what I'm denying. Maybe that connection is automatic in certain corners of the right-wing activist community -- whose concerns for "academic freedom" more or less begin and end with Horowitz and the SAF -- but I see no reason whatsoever to treat it as such for the public at large, and especially not for the academic community at large, whose thinking about the topic goes much further back & much further beyond Horowitz's recent silliness.

Eric: I'm not sure what you're devil's-advocating about, since I take it we agree about the recent actions in ND; is it just my dismissal of Horowitz? My super-abbreviated response is (i) no one's even come close to showing that the self-selection hypothesis can't explain what little data there is on the topic; and (ii) even if there were actual violations of academic freedom involved, measures like PA Resolution 177 are a simply terrible way to go about addressing it.

phil,

I'm devils-advocating for the idea that the academy really isn't free, ideologically.

The human tendency to want to associate with people like oneself is not to be underestimated. My girlfriend works in a lab at a university and when she revealed over lunch to her colleagues that she is registered Republican who voted for Bush, her surprised boss (a respected scientist in her field) joked that she ought to ask about that during the interview process.

Yes, it was said in jest, but I still think it's revealing. My personal guess is that self-selection on the part of conservatives contributes somewhat to the liberal domination in academia, but bias on the part of the liberal university establishement exacerbates the situation.

It's important to recognize a distinction here between different ways in which a conservative can be made to feel ill-at-home in a given academic setting:

(i) There may simply be a cultural mismatch between them and others in the field. If your values, interests, manners of speaking, etc. are somewhat distinct from what is pretty standard in a group you're trying to be a member in, life will be somewhat less pleasant & easy for you than it would be otherwise. For example, in my current setting, most of my colleagues have a preference for classical music & opera, and some others for serious jazz; my own tastes run to an odd mix of country and punk, and in this one regard, then, I am shut out from some 'water-cooler' conversation, cannot as easily go on weekend social outings with my co-workers (not if I want to enjoy them, anyhow), and so on. Note that I'm hardly _forbidden_ from such things; there's no parallel here with, say, using whites-only or men-only clubs. It's just that I'm not going to want to do some of things that most of my coworkers want to do. In my case, this is only a small annoyance -- I have plenty of other points of cultural contact with them -- but in cases where this is multiplied by a great many such factors, you're going to have some rather unhappy folks. Perhaps unhappy enough such that, though nothing unjust is going on, they will simply prefer not to pursue such a career in that setting.

(ii) The field itself may be so constituted as to consider various of their claims with political content to lie outside what the field considers as real options. Economics departments fairly universally consider Marxist economics just not a real option. Biology departments similarly reject religion-based accounts, like YEC. But these rejections are not without political content -- I am not saying they are politically motivated, just that they are, by their nature, not politically neutral. If other disciplines, like sociology or anthropology or literature, take themselves to be currently constituted such that particular views are off-the-map, then people holding those views are simply not going to be able to have productive careers in those fields. As with (i), I do not see how this in an infringement on academic freedom -- it's at the very heart of academic freedom that disciplines constitute themselves as they see fit, not how others outside of those disciplines might like them to be.

(iii) They are, either explicitly or unconsciously, being pushed away due to their political views. I.e., real bias. Whereas factors like (i) and (ii) are not, I think, unjust, any actual situations of this sort would be unjust, and almost all (non-religious) universities would agree that that shouldn't happen. But I have yet to see any reason to think that it happens with any significant frequency whatsoever. (It seems to me, from your description, that your friend was pretty clearly having a type-(i) experience, not a type-(iii) one.)

Here's a fortuitously-timed essay from the eminent Michael Berube:
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/academic_freedom/

And another possible explanation for some (and only some, and I expect only recently) of the asymmetric representation of Democrats and Republicans in the academy, is that some people start off apolitical until they get academically active, and then are driven away from the GOP by craziness like this:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_01/008102.php