On July 29, Vanderbilt University’s board of trustees announced the release of “The University And Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles.” Under the guidance of Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, this declaration marks an alarming threat to free expression and represents the worst attack yet by a Board of Trustees against academic values.
Last month, I warned that the so-called Vanderbilt Report on scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences seemed to embrace the “first steps” toward authoritarian answers to its (badly) alleged crimes against academic standards. Little could I imagine that the explicit march toward censorship would come so quickly at Vanderbilt.
The Vanderbilt board goes far beyond mere criticism of faculty with views they dislike, to claiming that professors with views they deem “political” are violating their professional duties: “Faculty have a corresponding duty to act in accordance with and actively maintain scholarly standards. Faculty fail to live up to this duty if they individually or collectively (e.g., in academic units or scholarly associations) subordinate scholarly standards to a political and social agenda.”
DOD Considers Course Reviews, Axing Tenure at Military Academies
