Departing Provost Lois Muir recently took extraordinary steps to reiterate the University of Montana's support for academic freedom.
“You are fully supported to conduct and disseminate your scholarly work and your professional opinions, including work that may be unpopular,” she wrote in a letter to faculty. Comforting words, to be sure. But what prompted them?
There's certainly no harm in reinforcing confidence that academic freedom prevails at UM, but Muir's memo probably should have included some additional advice faculty would do well to heed: “Grow a thicker skin.”
This mini-brouhaha erupted after Gov. Brian Schweitzer criticized a couple of UM professors who recently toured the state with a presentation, “Montana's Legal Environment: Are We Open for Business?” citing the state's constitutional guarantee of a healthy environment, failure to enact a right-to-work law and a law making it easier to fire workers, and high workers' compensation insurance costs as issues possibly affecting Montana's economic competitiveness.
Schweitzer called them “pointy-headed people” offering “worn-out, tired” ideas, and he suggested they were out of touch in their ivory tower, failing to notice the rapid growth of Montana's economy.
Who's right? Who's wrong? It's an open question; the answer likely depends on one's perspective. Montana's economy is chugging right along, yet perhaps it could do even better. The professors posed a perfectly legitimate - albeit not altogether new - question whether revising laws and the constitution to better serve business might lead to greater prosperity. Montanans have been debating these things for many years. Based on the written version of their presentation, however, it's not surprising that some people interpreted them as advocating changes in laws and the constitution. Their article cites nothing positive about Montana's legal environment for business and, in fact, starts with, “Whenever we compare Montana's business sector to surrounding states, we are envious.” Other states, they tell us, make it easier to opt out of a union, to fire people and don't constitutionally guarantee a healthful environment.
But while the professors have every right - arguably, even the responsibility - to discuss their views, surely the state's governor is entitled to do the same. He ought to be able to criticize and challenge ideas that deal with public policy and, in fact, are fundamentally political in nature. It would be a different story, of course, if the governor abused his authority to suppress academic work with which he disagreed, or to fire the offending professors.
It's been hard to get the principals to discuss this matter, but we get a hazy notion that the issue revolves around the nature of the professors' presentation - whether it was perceived by paying audiences as advocacy based on solid academic research or something less provocative. At this point, everyone seems in agreement that the “Are We Open for Business” presentation was based on a limited sampling of concerns voiced by self-selected businesses and not actually meant to be taken as true scientific research. It may be that the professors felt pressured over this or some other point, but it's not clear from where that pressure actually came. The professors aren't naming names; UM's executive vice president says he's sure no pressure came from university officials - certainly not from him, he says, although he did talk with them. That leaves us little to judge from, other than Schweitzer's public comments, which, however pointed, don't exactly rise to the level of academic freedom infringement.
It's possible that we have here a chain of people, each interpreting what they hear from the next in the most negative possible manner - organized labor representatives overreacting to the professors' broaching a right-to-work law; an aide to the governor conveying those concerns to a UM administrator; a UM administrator too efficiently conveying the comments; professors mistaking spirited debate and feedback for actual threat.
Sensitivity to criticism may come naturally to UM's faculty. After all, the suspension of a UM economics professor, Louis Levine, in 1919 for his study showing the mining companies weren't paying their fair share of taxes remains one of the classic examples of the suppression of academic freedom. It's part of the institutional lore. Levine today remains the American Association of University Professors' national poster boy for academic freedom.
However you might characterize the current flap, it's an overreaction to say the governor's public retort to criticism of policies he oversees threatens academic freedom. If anything, in mixing it up with the professors, the governor invites greater attention and discussion of Montana's business climate. That's a good thing.
Interestingly, there have been real threats to academic freedom that have gone largely unanswered in recent years. The Legislature's threat to shut down the environmental studies program comes quickly to mind, as does a former legislative leader's attempts to oust former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams from his teaching job. Then there was the time, in 1990, when Ron Erickson, an environmental studies professor, was hauled before a grand jury investigating tree-spiking for, apparently, merely discussing such acts of sabotage in the classroom. And we couldn't begin to count the times we heard politicians calling for the head of Tom Power, the sometimes provocative chairman of UM's Economics Department. Anybody remember the wrath directed at law professor Rob Natelson after he took on a popular Republican governor and challenged a tax increase?
But when an optimistic Democratic governor verbally flicks a couple of nay-saying business professors? That's what creates a “frozen environment” for academia? It shouldn't.
Academia does much to contribute to public understanding and discussion of all sorts of issues, and it's vitally important that researchers and teachers be free to seek and speak the truth - not just what's politically correct. It's good to have UM officials voiceing strong support for academic freedom, a form of free speech. But the right to speak your mind never includes complete insulation from reaction by the recipients of your wisdom.
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