Thoughts on Academic Freedom

Posted on Daily Kos. There's a balance to be had between not curtailing free thought and exploration of even offensive ideas, and allowing the students the same freedom to explore meritorious ideas without ramifications. I think it comes close to striking it:

"We should not say that academic freedom means that there is no review within the university, no accountability, for the 'content' of our classes or our scholarship," he said. "There is a review, it does have consequences, and it does consider content." Mr. Bollinger said that he was not preventing professors from expressing their opinions in the classroom, but that there were boundaries. "The question is not whether a professor advocates a view," he said, "but whether the overall design of the class, and course, is to explore the full range of the complexity of the subject."

So long as it's used in practice as quoted here, and does not become a witch-hunt to oust professors with unpopular views, I can agree with the approach. Maybe it's just I'm attuned to this kind of thing, but I'm seeing too many articles these days of pressure being brought to fire professors based on defensible yet controversial content (as opposed to straight racist or sexist KKK-style dogma), or flunking students with opposing viewpoints.