Photo by Thomas Gray Salter.
A half century of community organizational activism... We cannot run away from the Winds of Challenge and Change. We have to take History and ride with it. Always ahead, always toward the Sun. And always aware that Democracy is natural and, given half a chance, it will always flourish. We have big fish to fry and we're going to have to do it in our own home-grown skillet -- over a long-burning fire from the timber of our own forests.
Bear's Lair

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Hunter's Redbadbear Library

Academic Freedom [On a view in the NYT]
by Hunter Gray, 9 February 2009

This current piece from NYT(The Two Languages of Academic Freedom by Stanley Fish), not especially noteworthy in its clarity, does illustrate what's all too frequently the "quasi-liberal" perspective on basic freedom of expression issues -- in this case, academic freedom. Taking the admittedly interesting and provocative -- and essentially atypical --case of a professed "anarchist" professor at the University of Ottawa, and drawing apples-and-oranges analogies with law firms and corporations, the writer edges rapidly toward the "responsible" interpretation of this fundamentally critical and necessary principle -- fundamentally critical and necessary for not only professors but certainly for students and society.

Academic institutions aren't law firms or corporations. They are, presumably, committed to opening all of the doors to Truth -- at least in the relative sense -- and letting the also presumably free minds of those within range draw their own individual conclusions, and go on from there with their lives and destiny.

I become extremely wary when I read of ostensibly "reasonable" efforts to limit freedom of expression [or any other basic freedoms as well.] Far, far more prevalent than "mad professors" in the academic groves are those administrators and their sycophants, generally conscious of open and shadowy economic and political power structure concerns, who display perennial distrust of free expression and who work, overtly and covertly, to curtail it.

Although I give my "vocation" the handle of Organizer, I have taught many years in the college and university setting -- many places -- while organizing usually controversial things on the side. I've certainly never been an "objective" professor.

And, frankly, if this has made, sooner or later, most academic administrators unhappy and downright uneasy, almost all students I've encountered [regardless of their own respective views] have liked this much [as I did when I was a student] and my classes were always notably quite large and characterized by very lively discussion indeed.

Well, you can get flack from the time-serving bureaucrats. If non-tenured, one's contract might not be renewed [that's happened to me] and, if you have tenure, that may still hold fairly well to a point -- but petty harassment, often officially initiated and generally officially sanctioned, can make one's life outside the pleasant classroom and inside the unpleasant departmental offices, something of a trial. [And that's happened to me.] This can frequently be the case if the professor is involved in meaningful social justice work "out in the community."

I've been on all of those trails. And I certainly know other good souls who have as well -- though there are never nearly enough of them in academia.

A good friend and colleague, himself a professor at Winnipeg, recently summed up my eventual situation at the University of North Dakota:
"I was happy to have received a nice review from Hunter for my book. He was one of the old school Native Studies Professors who were as much or more activists than they were simply scholars. This included people like Art Solomon and others who were defining what Native Studies should be about in the late 60's and early 70's. A lot of them disassociated themselves from programs such these, not liking the direction they were heading in. People like Hunter were vilified by Anthropologists who believed Native Studies wasn't academic enough. In other words, they should be the ones teaching Native Studies. Many of these types such as at the University of North Dakota where Hunter taught, now run the programs. There are very few social activists left in the discipline who are involved in prison reform and such." [Brian Rice, Mohawk]

Keep fighting, keep talking, keep fighting.

And swat the mosquitoes.