By Eric Johnson
Contributing Editor

CHAPEL HILL (Sept. 26, 2016) – Dueling visions of academic freedom took stage at UNC Chapel Hill last week as Jay Schalin of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy faced off against John Wilson of the American Association of University Professors.

Schalin, a longtime critic of liberal bias in academia, argued for a strict ban on political activism by professors.

“I don’t believe activists have any place in the University,” he said. “They deny the spirit of inquiry. They seek influence rather than truth.”

Students are an inherently vulnerable population, he went on, open to manipulation by academics trying to push a particular worldview. Schalin said younger students are especially susceptible to political ideas, and curbs on faculty speech are needed to protect them.

“There are times when academic freedom must be constrained to best serve the truth,” he said.

Nonsense, Wilson retorted.

“We need to realize students are adults,” he said. “They have the capacity to judge for themselves, to criticize, to be exposed to political ideals.”

Because there’s no objective way to define activism, any attempt to ban political speech from the classroom would lead to endless fights and costly litigation, Wilson argued. The solution for speech you don’t like is counter-speech and more robust discussion, he said.

“We need a more radical sense of freedom of speech and academic freedom on campus,” he said. “It’s not a part of anyone’s freedom of speech that you have a right to be protected from hearing an idea you don’t like.”

Debate over academic freedom and political interference at North Carolina’s public universities has drawn national attention in recent years.  The closures of three academic centers by the UNC Board of Governors met with controversy, and faculty have decried funds from conservative groups for free-enterprise institutes and professorships.

That put a spotlight on long-running arguments about tenure protection, faculty bias, and political influence in university curriculum.

The forum at UNC’s Wilson Library was sponsored by the Pope Center and moderated by Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).  Shibley noted that UNC Chapel Hill has generally welcomed that kind of discussion, hosting talks and forums even by those critical of University positions.

Schalin and other conservative critics have used those opportunities to argue for stronger oversight by governing boards and legislators of the content of classroom teaching.

“There has to be an ultimate authority somewhere,” he said. “Somebody, somewhere has to do something when there’s a problem.”

Wilson said that greater political oversight of faculty invites danger for both liberal and conservative viewpoints, since shifting majorities in the legislature and on governing boards might be inclined to police different kinds of speech.

Adopting a broader idea of academic freedom helps protect all points of view, he contended.

“Suppressing political speech is dangerous,” Wilson said. “And the fact that someone says something about politics isn’t going to kill you.”