Thursday, December 29, 2011

Hillsdale College Faculty Statement on Academic Freedom



Written by Russell Amos Kirk; Adopted by the Hillsdale College Faculty on March 2, 1995.

There is a species of freedom peculiar to the academy: it is commonly called academic freedom, and has historically been linked with tenure and various forms of due process designed to ameliorate conditions of implacable dispute.   Ideally, academic freedom is that freedom to examine, dissect, describe, and explore the validity, utility, and consequences of ideas, beliefs, and institutions. Hillsdale subscribes to the ideal, but recognizes that it takes meaning only in the complex of principles which govern the entire College community and its several constituencies.  The College suggests, then, the  following summary statement, which may very well serve as a summary for all its principles:

Every right is joined to a corresponding duty.  So it is with the principles of academic freedom to which Hillsdale College subscribes.

Hillsdale College, an independent educational institution governed by its Board of Trustees, affirms its freedom from direction by public political authority.  Correspondingly, Hillsdale College recognizes its duties toward American society and toward the civilization of which we are a part.

Hillsdale College, as an independent institution, affirms its freedom from interference by interests or associations not related to the College by law or custom.  Correspondingly, Hillsdale College recognizes its duties toward persons rightfully associated with the College—alumni, members of faculty and staff, and students.

Hillsdale College, as dedicated to ordered liberty in private and public concerns, affirms its concern for the intellectual freedom of members of its faculty and staff.  Correspondingly, Hillsdale recognizes its duties of ensuring thorough competence and good character in its faculty and staff, as such competence and character relate to the canons of their profession.

Hillsdale College, in keeping with its commitment to principles of ordered liberty, affirms its desire to develop responsible freedom of thought and choice among its students.  Correspondingly, Hillsdale College recognizes its duties of imparting to students habits of mind and conduct which develop an understanding of private and public order. 

Hillsdale College affirms that academic freedom is bound up with a valuable legacy of other freedoms and duties.  Among these are the following aspects of ordered liberty to be considered with their related moral and social obligations: freedom of worship; freedom in work; freedom in politics; freedom in the economy. 

Hillsdale College affirms that all these freedoms are dependent upon the maintenance of a moral order; and that academic freedom in particular requires attachment to a body of truth, made known through the order and integration of knowledge.  Of such truths the College is the conservator and renewer, and the primary function of the College is to transmit, through these truths, some measure of wisdom and virtue.
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Holiness in Pfeifer, Kansas

The Christian Humanist

To defend the West, we must follow six tenets:
  • First, that the preservation of the virtues of the West, best understood through the stories of the exemplars of these virtues, is a sacred duty.
  • Second, that one must understand history in metahistorical, theological, and poetic terms as did Virgil and St. Augustine.
  • Third, one must embrace a proper anthropology, defining man by both his inherited sin and his received grace. The person, at root, is a being endowed with rationality, reason, and passion. He is higher than the animals, but lower than the angels. He must, to be fully human, balance each of these tensions.
  • Fourth, Christians (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant)—in alliance with believing Jews and even virtuous pagans—must sanctify the world through the Grace of God. For men of good will to fight amongst themselves squanders precious time and resources, and it leaves the field to the Enemy.
  • Fifth, the real struggle in the world is not between left and right, but between Christ and anti-Christ, between that which is humane and that which is anti-humane.
  • Finally, true remembrance, preservation, and advocacy of all that is Good, True, and Beautiful, comes from a recognition that our highest form of understanding is derived from the reflection of the light of the Logos (Gospel of St. John 1:9) in our souls through the faculty of imagination. In this point, one must follow not just St. John, but the Blessed Virgin Mary: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Or, as St. Augustine put in it in his sermon on Psalm 58: “Of itself it hath no light, nor of itself powers; but all that is fair in a soul is virtue and wisdom; but it neither is wise for itself, nor strong for itself, nor is itself light to itself, nor is itself virtue to itself. There is a certain fountain and origin of virtue, there is a certain root of wisdom, there is a certain, so to speak, if this also is to be said, region of immutable truth; from which if the soul withdraws it is made dark and if it draws near it is made light.”