Maguire on Academic Freedom

The other night at UW Oshkosh, a panel of professors gave their opinions on "Academic Freedom as a Form of Free Speech." Miles Maguire, a journalism professor on the campus, delivered what I thought was a brilliant statement on the topic. Acting very much like a crap detector in the tradition of the great H.L. Mencken cited in his text, Maguire exposes how the campus administration's treatment of the Kevin Barrett event has had bad consequences for academic freedom on our campus. He says in part:

The question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we believe in academic freedom in fact or merely as a convenient way of shielding ourselves from criticism.

The test has to be whether we conduct ourselves in a way that is consistent with the claims and the statements about academic freedom that our found in the institutions’ governing documents.

If we look in Chapter One of the Faculty Handbook, we see this statement:

“To be free, a university must encourage a full examination of all viewpoints, but to remain free, the institution must avoid actions which advocate a particular viewpoint.”

I don’t see how what we are doing on this panel, and the one two weeks ago on “Why People Believe Weird Things” can be squared with that statement.

Rather than encourage a full examination of Kevin Barrett’s point of view, it seems to me that we are trying to overshadow and crowd out his appearance on campus. And in doing that we are advocating a particular viewpoint about his legitimacy.

With Miles' permission, I reproduce his entire statement here.