| Show Critical Thought The following reprinted from Sociology of Education A by Robert R. was submitted by Robert G. instructor in to Chronicle columnists Chuck Akerlow and Dennis James prefaced the article with the following has given me the greatest relief to read a Chronicle with some challenging statements for a My first two years on this campus I was greatly concerned bv the ultra conservative thinking on behalf of the students and the lack of reflective As a token of my you might be interested in this excerpt of academic It is widely agreed among educators that academic freedom suffered during the of the postwar A number of surveys during the early showed teachers to be and fearful of dealing with controversial issues lest they be attacked Anxiety appears to have somewhat but a legacy of loyalty oaths and play-it-safe attitudes Professors are loath to act as faculty advisors to student organizations dealing with controversial or unpopular and students are wary of joining any group which might be suspect in a security clearance investigation years The vigorously argumentative campus atmosphere of the and has given way to one which is and Possibly the preoccupation with of which the college is so often may be in part due to the diversion of interests from dangerous ideas to campus It is clear that academic freedom is not merely a convenience for the but a necessity for a free When academic freedom is the main casualties are not the most of whom form a quite conservative group who can easily accommodate themselves to the prevailing The real casualty is in critical THE DOMINANT NOTE in nearly all discussions on academic freedom in educational journals is concern over growing paralysis of thought in the nation's The play safe attitude in induced largely by the activities of fanatical has been one of the main concerns of the national educational The real issue is not whether communism should be or whether Communists should Every major educational organization in America has agreed that Communist party having abandoned the objective search for truth by submitting to the discipline of an absolute are unfit to No responsible person familiar with the facts believes that any significant number of true Communists remains among American school and college and in this most critics Any Communist can remain a teacher in the present atmosphere- only by refraining from all communistic The real issue is not since it is no present ideological threat and has no influential defenders in American The real issue in the academic freedom controversy is between those who believe that truth can protect itself and those who believe that truth must be helped out by suppressing the expression of and between those who want an objective treatment of social issues and those who want special treatment for their There are some people who label as or almost any ideas which disagree sharply with their In attacking these people are really insisting that no ideas but their own should be Their ideas seem so unmistakably right to them that they do not realize the bigotry of their Like an Illinois congressman who was surprised when people criticized his statement that the purpose of a bill not to prohibit exploration of ideas but to prevent people from reaching wrong they are puzzled and hurt when critics suggest that they have no understanding of democratic But their benign intentions make the enemies of academic And in coming academic freedom will regain the ground it has or lose still is a question few social scientists would care to |
