The Academic Bill of Rights Debate : A Handbook

The Academic Bill of Rights was introduced in 2003 after two decades of conservative critiques of higher education and its faculty. Its goal was to generate legislative initiatives to rein in the "tenured radicals" who were allegedly dominating higher education and infringing on the academic freedom rights of conservative students. At its root, the debate revolves around some core questions: who should teach, and who has the knowledge and training to hire and evaluate faculty; what knowledge should be taught; and most fundamentally, who should make these decisions? Should it be trained faculty, who are specialists in their fields and who were hired to teach and advance knowledge? Or should it be politicians or outsiders, who may be empowered by legislation to interfere in academic decisions? The academic freedom of faculty, and the independence of higher education, depends on the answers to these questions.