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66 Tex. L. Rev. 1265 (1987-1988)
Profession and Constitution: Two Definitions of Academic Freedom in America

handle is hein.journals/tlr66 and id is 1299 raw text is: Profession and Constitution: Two Definitions of Academic Freedom in America Walter P. Metzger* I. Introduction As the designated stage-setter for this Symposium on Academic Freedom, I will lay out some of the conceptual furniture of the subject before the curtain rises on the panelists' consideration of its current state. I propose to concentrate on definitions. Everyone would agree that free- doms are defined by the manner in which they are defended-by the clarifying factuality of judgments rendered in specific cases that vindicate their claims and assess their limits. But the opposite is no less true: free- doms are defended by the manner in which they are defined-by images in the heads of monitors and judges that identify the persons eligible for protection, the prima facie instances of infringement, and the standards of proof for assigning blame. Convinced that the second causal nexus has not received the attention it deserves, I shall comment on how aca- demic freedom fares solely by pondering on what academic freedom means. What academic freedom means in today's America can best be grasped, I think, by dwelling on the pivotal definitions it has inherited from the past. To retrieve those definitions, we need not backtrack very far. Clearly, the martyrology of academic freedom has a much longer history than its seminal formulations. In America, the tale of suffering in its behalf goes back to the ouster of the heretical first president of Harvard College by its Puritan masters, and even further back, by senti- mental appropriation, to the more pitiable ordeals of Socrates and Abe- lard. By contrast, the systematic search for a definition did not effectively begin until after the Civil War and did not bear significant fruit until after the turn of the century. A review of instances in which academics have suffered for freedom's sake ranges over the entire Ameri- can experience; a reconstruction of major efforts to define academic free- dom faces the less daunting prospect of covering only relatively recent times. In this country, the quest for definitions had two supremely creative Professor of History, Columbia University. 1265

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