Does Trump threaten academic freedom?

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) thinks so.  They cite his remarks on minorities, immigrants and women that have a “chilling effect on the rights” of students and professors “to speak out”; his call for an “ideological screening test” for immigrants; his desire to nominate a Supreme Court Justice like Antonin Scalia who might jeopardize university faculty unions; and his denial of climate change and “the validity of science itself.”

Michael McClymond, professor of theology at St. Louis University, is not so sure. He wonders why the AAUP has been silent about threats to academic freedom that already exist, such as “the call for university ‘safe spaces’ and the rejection of ‘platforming’ (i.e., allowance of space to speak) for those holding and expressing controversial opinions.”

Here is his letter to the Director of the AAUP:

Professor Fichtenbaum:

I just received your AAUP mail, which included the following in the opening paragraph:

“It would be foolish, however, to deny that most college and university faculty members did not support the election of Donald Trump. Many no doubt fear that his election threatens some of the core institutions of our democracy and may be the greatest threat to academic freedom since the McCarthy period.”

I am afraid that I cannot go along with either of your premises in sending this email.

Firstly, unless you have access to data indicating how university faculty members voted in the presidential election, then it seems to me that you really don’t know and can’t presume to know how faculty members might have voted.  (For the record, I did not vote for Donald Trump as president.)  Isn’t the premise of your email an uninformed personal opinion?  And why should you send out this mass email with nothing more to back it than an uninformed personal opinion?  Neither you nor I know for certain how people might have cast their votes in the privacy of the ballot box.

Secondly, and perhaps more substantively, it should be clear by now that there have been recent, major challenges to academic freedom and free expression in the university in recent years that long preceded the election of Donald Trump, just this week.  I am referring to the call for university “safe spaces” and the rejection of “platforming” (i.e., allowance of space to speak) for those holding and expressing controversial opinions.

My PhD alma mater–the University of Chicago–has recently affirmed their unconditional commitment to free speech in the American university context.  This outstanding university responded to challenges to free speech arising out of so-called political correctness, and not to the vulgar bluster of President-Elect Trump, which seems unlikely to affect academic free-speech policies in the near or long term.  (How much does Trump reallycare about the universities anyway? And how could he possibly restrict or regulate them as US president?)

Your email message thus seems to me to place its emphasis in precisely the wrong place.  It largely ignores the genuine challenges to free speech in the universities that have emerged in recent years–and which the University of Chicago specifically sought to address–while going off to “fence at dragons” by envisioning some sort of repressive future enactment restricting free speech under President-Elect Trump.

Would it not make more sense for AAUP simply to reaffirm its free speech policy, rather to engage in post-election handwringing and anxious anticipation of future consequences that may never materialize? Why not focus on the free speech issue that exists right now, rather than the any that might or might not exist in the future?

Appreciatively,

Michael J. McClymond

Professor of Modern Christianity

Department of Theological Studies

Saint Louis University