A historical and legal context of faculty academic freedom in American higher education.

摘要

This historical study of academic freedom in higher education accomplished three major objectives: investigation into the original and emerged concept of academic freedom in higher education, identification and analysis of significant historical and legal events which influenced academic freedom during this same time period, and identification of societal and legal trends which influenced education administrative policy decisions. Academic freedom of faculty members, institutions, and scholastic sovereignty of students, though all important, were considered to be separate issues by most learned educational policy and theory experts. This dissertation fully explored the concept of academic freedom of the university faculty and explored the concept as it applied to students or institutions only when the two distinct concepts commingled. The ideology surrounding intellectual liberties was exhibited through paradigm shifts over time. Ideologies surrounding the concept of academic freedom within academic settings have been manifested and well documented since the age of Socrates. However, the concept of academic freedom, as it applies to the faculty in the American university in the twentieth century, was the focus of this dissertation. Educational philosophies impacting academic freedom prior to 1900 were generalized in a single chapter; subsequent scrutiny of the philosophies, laws, and legal precedents impacting academic freedom after 1900 was then performed.