Last week, two cylinders in my odometer turned over. In many ways it’s just one more day, but there is something about moving to a new decade that forces reflection.

I am now older than my grandparents were when I was born, older than most of the parents of our students, and middle-age is well in the rear-view mirror.

This doesn’t seem possible. Years ago, I remember my parents saying that they didn’t feel older, and now I get it. It isn’t about physically feeling the same, but I still feel like the kid who just showed up for college in 1981.

I have been surrounded by undergraduates ever since, which may be a contributing factor. My college advisor once told me that because he spent his days with 20-year-olds, as long as he didn’t look in the mirror, he often forgot that he wasn’t one of them. That is a gift of this work: being surrounded by ebullient and passionate young people. They are inspiring and energizing — most of the time.

In truth, my feelings of still being that newly arrived college student are not a temporal Stockholm syndrome. Almost every day, I feel like the kid who got invited to the grown-ups’ table at Thanksgiving because there was an extra chair.

Instead of Stockholm, it’s a form of imposter’s syndrome. I was still in my 30s when I first became a cabinet member at a college. There were benefits from feeling that I had to prove I belonged there, but 20+ years later, that feeling has never gone away.

Occasionally, I share this perspective with colleagues and students. They are generally surprised — I’ve been fortunate to be at the grown-ups’ table for a long time, but I still often feel like an interloper — they almost always express relief. It turns out, I am not alone in these feelings.

I am comfortable in my daily work — There are many routines in calendar-driven university life, and I am blessed to be surrounded by kind and wonderful colleagues, students, alumni, and friends — but I have a perennial wonderment that somehow, I snuck into this great life.

Many of our students feel like imposters, just by being on campus. Normalizing those feelings is important. They are here because we know they belong, and each brings gifts to our community.

Making the most of their educational opportunities can exacerbate self-doubt. Progress and development are dependent upon taking risks and challenging ourselves, and that can be unsettling. Striving feels like stretching beyond ourselves. Growing is an act of becoming; we can feel like imposters because we are never there yet.

The lesson I am continuing to learn is that in some ways, we never really feel grown up, and that is a good thing.

In the landmark Supreme Court decision, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, Justice Felix Frankfurter outlined the rights and responsibilities of professors:

“. . . It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a university – to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” [1]

These “four freedoms” have become the foundation for faculty autonomy in American higher education and have served as the bedrock for operationalizing academic freedom in the United States for more than six decades.

Recently, in a number of states, legislative and gubernatorial efforts have significantly undermined these principles. Efforts have been undertaken to guarantee what has perversely been labeled “diversity of thought” (Indiana) while concurrently eliminating academic disciplines from institutional offerings (Florida) and banning DEI training (Utah)

The Indiana legislation creates post-tenure review led by a politically appointed board that can strip a faculty member of tenure and employment if they, not a group of disciplinary experts, deem that the faculty member has introduced ideological bias in their classes.

Throughout history, there have been efforts by governments to censor and limit what is taught in universities and public schools. Totalitarian states are built on these efforts, and the Sweezy decision was a response to the “Red scare” in the U.S. in the 1950s.

Democracy depends on a spirit of free inquiry, the ability to ask any question, freedom to engage with difficult subjects, and most importantly, a commitment to discern what is true. This is the expertise of the professoriate. It is what they are trained to do, and the process of peer review within the academy keeps them accountable.

This tradition has provided an intellectual rudder for our evolving democratic republic, but it is now being systematically eroded through well coördinated factionalism. These efforts appear to have two goals: re-expanding the marginalization of minoritized populations and discrediting experts.

I recently heard an elected official declare that to protect ourselves from “group think,” we need to eliminate mandatory diversity training on our campuses. If we all believed that every member of our community should feel valued and have a sense of belonging, is that indoctrination, or is it learning to be better neighbors? There are experts on our campuses that can help us create more sympathetic and kinder communities, we should celebrate and benefit from their efforts, not ban them. Those who need that training most would be the last to take it voluntarily.

We should embrace and celebrate experts more broadly. They have the training and capacity, and with tenure the protection, to tell truth to power and to advance knowledge. This is how we advance as a society.

In the Sweeny decision, Justice Frankfurter stated: “Freedom to reason and freedom for disputation on the basis of observation and experiment are the necessary conditions for the advancement of scientific knowledge. A sense of freedom is also necessary for creative work in the arts which, equally with scientific research, is the concern of the university.”

When led by the academic community, our universities are crucibles of reason and innovation. They are the bulwarks of democracy. We must protect them from political overreach and preserve the essential freedoms of a university, which are the foundations of freedom for us all.

[1] Justice Felix Frankfurter: Sweezy v. New Hampshire 354 U.S. 264 (1957).

Academic freedom has recently become a recurring topic in the general media with claims from all corners of the political spectrum that free speech and expression are being suppressed on college campuses. In some instances, countervailing voices are accusing each other of attacking academic freedom for what the other side states is its defense.

The vanguard defender of academic freedom in the United States is the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). This organization is also the gold standard for research and well-articulated position papers on many facets of academic freedom and shared governance.

The touchstone for this topic is the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. It includes the following framework:

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence, they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution. [1]

Fundamentally, professors have freedom of inquiry and the freedom to promulgate the findings of their scholarship. They have freedom in the classroom within the bounds of their disciplinary expertise, and they have the full freedom of expression of all other citizen outside of the academy, but they should be mindful to clarify when they are not speaking as a representative of their institution.

Academic freedom is not a license to say whatever you want without consequence, but it is a protection to articulate your findings based upon your disciplinary expertise while exercising research integrity. Expertise matters. Academic freedom also protects the scholar from interference or undue influence from politicians, donors, corporations, trustees, and administrators.

Recently, academic advocacy groups have emerged on a number of campuses in response to what they perceive as a chilling, and in some cases a silencing, of campus speech, especially on the topics of Israel and Palestine and DEI.

We have also seen new levels of governmental involvement in these issues. The congressional hearings in which the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT testified have no precedent in my lifetime, and sadly, for many Americans who watched these painful hearings, this is their only experience listening to a university president.

Since last year, 81 bills limiting DEI efforts on campuses have been introduced in 28 states. Eight have legislative approval and eight more have become law. There is legislation moving through the Arizona state government that would allow students to contest their grades to a  new department under the Board of Regents that would have no disciplinary experts conducting the review. There is also a bill in Indiana that would give boards the ability to deny tenure and even revoke it for what they determine to be a lack of “intellectual diversity.”

The principles and standards of academic freedom were established to protect free inquiry, and in turn to support a free and open democratic society that benefits from the fruits of rigorous scholarship and research in which all questions can be asked, and for which legitimate answers can be found and disseminated even when they are uncomfortable to those in power.

Therefore, academic freedom is a critical safeguard of democracy and a foundational pillar of our democratic republic that we all should zealously defend and celebrate.

[1] AAUP: Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, 1940.