One hundred years after the Bassett Affair, the issue of academic freedom remains a centerpiece of concern for University administrators and faculty--who cite current threats to free discourse as coming from all sides, including the government, general society and even members of the University community itself.
"It is as relevant today as it was in 1903," said President Nan Keohane. "Thus, we need to continue to express and uphold the central value of this defining aspect of academic life."
Provost Peter Lange agreed, naming it among the top responsibilities of the academy.
"It is a core value," said Lange. "In the absence of academic freedom, it is difficult to see how the University could appropriately pursue its teaching or research responsibilities."
Although all agree on the importance of the issue, challenges to academic freedom threaten from all directions.
Nan Nixon, assistant vice president of federal relations, said the advisory board for international education, which was developed to evaluate the teaching of international and foreign language studies at higher education institutions, poses a serious threat to intellectual freedom. This board is a component of the International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003, which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
"The thing that we are concerned about is the advisory board and the charge to the board," she said. "It has very broad powers to investigate the international education area of studies on campuses. The concern is that this is really a broad mandate for the board to investigate what's going on in the program on campuses and then beginning to step in on curriculum matters."
Nixon said that officials from Duke and other universities will lobby for the bill to be altered to limit the powers of the board before it is voted on in the Senate.
"It would operate very freely, and in what could be a very controversial and chilling sort of area about open discussion in the classroom," Nixon said.
Along with potential governmental infringement, Professor John Thompson, chair of the history department, pointed to the current political climate that has resulted from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as a threat to free discourse.
"Academic freedom is only as secure as the most recent case [in which it is protected]. There is greater enthusiasm in American society at large to shrink it, there's less understanding for dissenting views than there was at the end of the Cold War. You could say the new version of the red bogey is the terrorist bogey."
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe also saw the current climate as a threat to academic freedom, citing patriotism in its extreme form as detrimental to intellectual openness.
"The greatest threat to academic freedom is those who use the flag and loyalty to the country as a basis for attacking people who dissent from American policy," he said. "When patriotism is used as a blanket rationale to inhibit free discussion and criticism then it has a chilling effect on free speech."
While many threats to a free and open campus come from outside the University's walls, threats to academic freedom arise from on-campus sources as well.
Robert Durden, professor emeritus of history, cited Bassett's article in the South Atlantic Quarterly as a bold example of "political and racial heresy" for the time that took risks still viewed by some as perilous today.
"There is pressure for political correctness that is often a hamper to academic freedom," he said. "People are afraid not to toe the line in various matters--certain racial matters, and also for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Although Keohane noted that many students may feel comfortable strongly voicing their opinions on campus, Thompson gave an example of students themselves limiting the academic freedom of professors.
"Some of it is coming from [students] at the present moment. One of my colleagues is being harassed by a student or students who are arguing that he or she is a communist," Thompson said.
With academic freedom on peoples' minds this week, Lange said he saw this as a time to focus more attention on the University community's responsibility to protect free discourse.
"Things like the Bassett Affair give us the opportunity to affirm our basic values and show why we have them," he said. "In addition, those values need to be defended by those with the responsibility to guide the University--administration and faculty both. They need to take opportunities as they arise to protect against their infringement, both on campus or off campus."
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