Relationship To Freedom of Speech
Academic freedom and free speech rights are not coextensive, although this widely accepted view has been recently challenged by an "institutionalist" perspective on the First Amendment. Academic freedom involves more than speech rights; for example, it includes the right to determine what is taught in the classroom. In practice, academic freedom is protected by institutional rules and regulations, letters of appointment, faculty handbooks, collective bargaining agreements, and academic custom.
In the U.S., the freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment, which states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." By extension, the First Amendment applies to all governmental institutions, including public universities. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that academic freedom is a First Amendment right at public institutions. However, The United States' First Amendment has generally been held to not not apply to private institutions, including religious institutions. These private institutions may honor freedom of speech and academic freedom at their discretion.
Read more about this topic: Academic Freedom
Famous quotes containing the words relationship to, relationship, freedom and/or speech:
“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
—George Orwell (19031950)
“I thought a lot about our nation and what I should do as president. And Sunday night before last, I made a speech about two problems of our countryenergy and malaise.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)