LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Procedural safeguards are needed to protect academic freedom

By:

Posted: 1/22/08

To the Editor:

I am sure that the op-ed in the Justice "Harassment policy must build a campus free from fear" (Jan. 15 issue) from colleagues in Women's and Gender Studies did not intentionally assume any guilt on the part of Prof. Hindley (POL) in the recent events around a claim made by a student or students of his.

The wording of the letter, however, and especially its timing, makes this ambiguous. As a lifelong feminist I join with them in their laudable stress on the inalienability of this right [to a classroom free of racism and sexism] and its pedagogical necessity.

What woman my age has not suffered through the humiliation of sexist language in the classroom and the more debilitating source of that language in the sexist beliefs and expectations of her instructors?

The happy outcome of our long struggle against it is evident every day in our classrooms, full of expressive and ambitious young women who have not been trained to intuit and obey the wishes and low expectations of their teachers. And that outcome, for women, is not yet secure, not by a long shot. It requires, like any access of liberty, "eternal vigilance." For people of color, for Muslims in countries like ours without majority Muslim populations, for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or transgender students, it is not yet even an outcome.

But to busy oneself with protecting the crucial right of complaint in the present context casts a strange shadow: Hindley has not been told what he is said to have said -to protect his accuser's anonymity-and has not been able to contribute his own account of his actions to the investigation, nor have any other witnesses from the classroom. He has been sanctioned and threatened with termination as the consequence of an anonymous accusation: He has not been charged nor been given the right to face or even know the name(s) of his accuser(s).

Nor have the procedures outlined in the Faculty Handbook been followed, which dictate that the first action in such a case be an informal meeting of the instructor with his or her Chair or other departmental representative.

The intervention of the bodies constituted to preserve the rights of the faculty has been rejected. We appear to be faced with an infringement of academic freedom of speech, which has attracted the attention of two of the country's top intellectual freedom attorneys, as well as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed and organizations interested in the preservation of academic freedom.

It is directly in the interests of students as well that their faculty be reasonably protected from limitations on freedom of expression. It is not in their interests to watch carried out in their own community a mirroring of the kind of erosion of justice and transparency we have seen over the last few years on the large scale in the Department of Justice and in the abrogation of the Constitutional requirement of habeas corpus.

I believe it is this consequence that was at the heart of my colleagues' letter: the possibility that students, fearing an unpredictable system of hidden and arbitrary justice, will not feel free henceforth to register complaints.

The writers of that letter are among my most respected colleagues. I am confident they would not disagree with any point I've made here. I make them only in fear that others may have misinterpreted the force of their letter in the Justice.

- Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG)