Idolatry & Academic Freedom

A stalking horse of relativism . . .

As it is generally understood in the realm of American education, the doctrine of academic freedom is a glaring example of idolatry. And ultimately, like every form of idolatry it is self-contradictory.

What the doctrine attempts to do is to start with a reasonable truth, which is that innovative and creative thinkers have in the past done well by challenging established and cherished truths that had only one weakness—which was that of being wrong. But once the value of that truth is recognized, the idea is to absolutize it, thus allowing credentialed academics to challenge and undermine anything they please, and doing it all in the name of academic freedom. Because Galileo challenged the blinkered churchmen, your woke history teachers gets to drop Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum, with regular folks saying hey!

This false doctrine presents an interesting dilemma for classical and Christian schools, which are institutions founded on and committed to a body of organized truths. As Christian schools, they have a confessional basis in their statement of faith. Jesus rose from the dead. God created the world. The moral law was handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. And as classical academies, they have a particular commitment to the heritage of the West, as well as their pledge to follow a particular pedagogical approach.

Such schools have already made a significant mark on the educational landscape. We have almost 500 schools in ACCS now, and our academic achievements are widely recognized. This means that our schools have become really attractive to talented teachers, many of whom have studied at the graduate level. Our schools have been made even more attractive as the schools in the public sector have by and large become woker than a bag of hammers.

But there is a challenge. The fact that many trained teachers are coming to us from the world’s colleges and universities means that there is a possibility that they might track something in. This is not likely to be kind of thing they are fleeing from—e.g. wokeness, or the lack of discipline, or low standards—but could easily be a poor understanding of academic freedom.

Let me make up a scenario, and sketch it out for you. Say there is a classical Christian school that was founded by a guy who owned a chain of tire centers, a salt of the earth, blue collar guy. His wife read a book on classical education and sold him on the idea. Their oldest was heading for kindergarten, and the public school in their area was simply not an option. He was a natural entrepreneur, not to mention fairly wealthy, and so the school was a big success, and now has around 350 students. It should go without saying that this founder doesn’t know a lick of Latin.

They then hire a man to teach classics and literature in the secondary. He was quite a catch, in that he had a masters from St. John’s, and a Ph.D. from Duke. He is fluent in Greek and Latin, is a gifted and natural teacher, and has been quite a hit with the students and parents. Because of his academic background, he also assumes that academic freedom means that he is free to teach his subject without any constraints being put on him. He might not even be rebellious—he just assumes this. He knows way more about his subject than the founders of the school do, and he is educated enough to know that the embarrassing business in the statement of faith about a young earth could not be meant to be taken seriously. Another contributing factor to this arises from longevity—if a highly trained teacher has been in a position for a number of years, there is a natural tendency for him to assume that he somehow “owns” the course. But it is not so.

At some point, a clash between the founder and this teacher is inevitable.

Relativism is a corrosive doctrine that will eat out any container that you try to keep it in, and academic freedom is a surreptitious form of relativism. The container that its defenders usually try to keep it in is the container of “credentials.” Not just anyone can waltz in and teach whatever, but if a person is credentialed, then it is assumed that their “training” will prevent them from going off the rails. This hubris has already done a lot of damage in our institutions of higher learning, but in our day the credentials container is almost completely rotted out. We are just a few steps away from our culture’s brains maintaining that requiring graduate degrees to teach in college is just one more form of white supremacy.

And obviously, another container would be the confessional commitments of the school. This is different from the credentials container, because this one is at least an honest commitment to the truth. But if any form of relativism is active in the faculty, including a high view of academic freedom, then it is just a matter of time before such corrosion takes place.

The doctrine of academic freedom assumes that collective entities (like schools and colleges) cannot come to a knowledge of the truth, and that they cannot confess that truth, or commit themselves to it. This is false. But because we know that this is a fallen world, it is also the case that collective entities can mistakenly commit themselves to something that they believe to be true, but which is erroneous.

For an example of this, assume a Seventh Day Adventist college, and also assume a theology instructor there who has a terminal degree in his discipline. Let us say that he comes to the honest conviction that Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and he no longer believes in the seventh day sabbath. Does he have the right to appeal to “academic freedom” in order to keep his job? Not at all. As the saying goes, you can’t work for MacDonalds and sell Wendy’s burgers. The only honest thing for him to do is go to his superior and say that his convictions have changed, and that he would like to tender his resignation in the most honest and peaceable way possible.

Because devotees of academic freedom believe that only individuals can confess the truth, and because they are individuals, and moreover, trained and credentialed individuals, there is a tendency to think that the school’s doctrinal commitments are just words on a page. But they are not just words—they represent a covenant, and covenants have binding epistemological authority.