ANAC Commentary

• Ithaca President Defends Academic Freedom
• Reviews Praise A New Academic Compact

"In the wake of Sept. 11, faculty members at colleges and universities in this country have come under official or public pressure for questioning various aspects of the U.S. government's past or projected policies. As a college president, I am alarmed that my academic colleagues can be threatened for exercising what is not only their right, but is also their duty, to speak freely. It is threats such as these that I find to be anti-American."

—Peggy Williams,
   President of Ithaca College

Ithaca President Defends Academic Freedom


What follows is excerpted from a guest column,: "Academic Freedom: At the Heart of IC," that Ithaca College president Peggy Williams wrote for the Ithaca Journal which appeared March 8, 2002. President Williams used as her text a well-known quotation attributed to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." She indicated in the column that she was provoked to respond to a guest column in the Ithaca Journal that criticized as "anti-American" an essay in the Ithaca College magazine which provided a variety of perspectives interpreting the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. The essay also elicited critical letters from alumni. Excerpts of Peggy Williams' response:

I found these reactions unsettling, causing me to question how well we are doing our jobs, which is to educate our students to think critically, appreciate diversity of background and outlook, and engage in intelligent, informed and respectful discourse. . . . A native of Pakistan, professor Barlas (essay author) served with that nation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was assistant editor of The Muslim newspaper. It is ironic, in light of the calls from some that her views be censored-or even censured-that one reason she left Pakistan for the United States was that she was not free to express her opinions there.

History-both ancient and recent-has shown us that extremism thrives in countries where assaults on academic freedom foster a climate of ignorance and intolerance. If we objected when Afghanistan's ruling Taliban shut down schools and shut out voices of opposition, we must also object when attempts are made closer to home to characterize critical thought as an attack on public decency, or even national security.

In the wake of Sept. 11, faculty members at colleges and universities in this country have come under official or public pressure for questioning various aspects of the U.S. government's past or projected policies. As a college president, I am alarmed that my academic colleagues can be threatened for exercising what is not only their right, but is also their duty, to speak freely. It is threats such as these that I find to be anti-American.

Reviews Praise A New Academic Compact

Earlier this year, Anker Press published a book, A New Academic Compact; Revisioning the Relationship Between Faculty and Their Institutions, that resulted from ANAC's four-year Faculty Work Project, supported through two grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts. ANAC members are considering ways that they might use the book as a text for strengthening the faculty-institutional partnership in addressing strategic priorities for institutional development. Reviews of the book to date have been positive, as suggested by the excerpts below:

From a review by Howard B. Altman, a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville, that appeared in the May issue of Academic Leader: "In any given decade, one book in higher education stands out as having the potential to dramatically affect the professional lives of college and university faculty and their institutions. In the 1990s that book was Ernest L. Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professorate, which did more than any other work of scholarship to help institutions recognize the value of different types of faculty research and faculty careers.

A dozen years later, A New Academic Compact: Revisioning the Relationship Between Faculty and Their Institutions, details proven strategies for enhancing the effectiveness, institutional loyalty, and morale of faculty at a time when, as Gene Rice writes in the book's foreword, the 'disconnection between faculty priorities and institutional purpose has been widely documented and highlighted in one national conference after another' (p. xi). If this book is as widely read and heeded as it deserves to be, it will become the heir to Boyer's classic work."

From a review by John Bennett, University Scholar and Provost Emeritus at Quinnipiac University, that appears in the summer issue of The Department Chair, "I find the overall concept of a new academic compact to be coherent, relevant, and compelling. However, the circumstances that allow for its widespread embrace are challenging indeed. Among other things, the rush of institutions toward adjunct faculty dependence seems to me to threaten the very reciprocity for which the compact is calling. . . . This makes the compact all the more important, but far more difficult, to implement. It will require even more energy, good will, and resources than just its extension to full-time faculty. But the alternatives seem quite unattractive. All the more reason, therefore, to study the book and consider how to apply the compact to your own institution."