Academic Freedom in the Religious College and University: Confronting the Postmodernist Challenge

ReJigiously -based co11eges and universities are committed to a certain faith stance which affects not onJy what is taught but also who does the teaching.Faculty are often required to sign a statement of faith before they are hired.Certain standards of behaviour, reflecting the supporting constituenc ies' values are often also required of faculty.Teaching and research are expected to be in keeping with the basic faith commitme nt of the institution.Failure to stay within these boundaries sometimes leads to the dismissal of the faculty member.Such expectation s would seem to be a blatant violation of the principle of academic freedom which is thought to undergird healthy liberal educationa l institutions .Hence, the following charge against such schools by Robert M. Mclver: "To make the university a center for the propagatio n of any creed, of any system of values that divides group from group, is to destroy the special quality and the unique mission of the university as a center for the free pursuit of knowledge wherever it may Jead." 1 A 1988 report of a subcommit tee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure is even more explicit.It suggests that the "necessary consequen ce" of religious institutions invoking the limitations clause in the AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom is that they forfeit "the moral right to proclaim themselves as authentic seats of higher learning.'• 2The purpose of this paper is to respond to charges such as these.I argue that religious colleges and universities do not of necessity violate the principle of academic freedom which is so sacred to the liberal educationa l establishm ent.My approach is to chaUenge some of the assumption s underlying the traditional concept of academic freedom.3 I then propose a revised ideal of academic freedom on the basis of which I hope to show that religious colleges and universities can have the required level of academic freedom which would make them authentic seats of higher learning just like their secular counterpar ts. Historical Observatio nsThe standard contempora ry ideal of academic freedom has a variety of roots: a medieval concern to protect quasi-eccle siastical universities from undue interferenc e from the temporal power of the state, the turn-of-the -century German ideal of Lehrfreihe it~he right of a university professor to freedom of inquiry and teaching, the EnJightenm ent, the ideals of the French revolution, and John Stuart Mill's classic defence of freedom.The modern secular university grew out of a conscious attempt to free scholarly investigatio n from the supposed strictures that had dominated scholarship prior to the EnJightenm ent, particularly those of religious tradition and authority.And academic freedom was seen as the central tenet of the modern secular university (McConne ll, 1993, p. 306).

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