Academic Freedom and Its Responsibilities
 

The Texas Way

The University of Texas at Austin exists to discover and produce knowledge, to teach it to the next generation, and to help advance the common good. These endeavors are grounded in the free exchange of ideas and the quest for truth.¹ For this reason our Tower heralds the words, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and affirms our mission “to transform lives for the benefit of society.” We seek to serve our state and nation while training the next generation of leaders. This is the Texas Way.

Academic Freedom and Citizenship

Academic freedom lies at the core of the academic enterprise.  It is foundational to the excellence of the American higher education system, and is non-negotiable. In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment.”² The world’s finest universities are in free societies, and free societies honor academic freedom.

Academic freedom also undergirds our civic mission of teaching our students the virtues of citizenship and equipping them for the responsibilities of self-government in a constitutional republic. In the words of our university motto, “The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.” This cultivation depends on academic freedom: the liberty to research, teach, and educate students in our collective pursuit of truth and knowledge.

Academic Integrity and Public Trust

Academic integrity is the alignment of our pursuit of knowledge, our moral responsibility to one another, and our teaching mission. It is the responsible exercise of academic freedom. As the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) affirmed in 1940: “Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights.”³

Academic integrity includes intellectual honesty and pedagogical responsibility. It embraces the university classroom as a sacred space for learning. For students, faculty, and our institution alike, a spirit of humility should prevail in the face of the mysterious and unknown, coupled with a spirit of audacity in questioning received verities and exploring new vistas. A spirit of grace should leaven the contentions and disputations that are central to academic inquiry.

Academic integrity also forms the foundation for public trust in universities. That trust is at once durable and fragile. It is durable in that it has sustained this University over a century through war and peace, recession and abundance, technological revolution and timeless inquiry, and turmoil and tranquility.

Yet the public trust is also fragile in that it must regularly be cultivated and renewed. When parents, students, and alumni lose confidence that teaching and research are undertaken with respect for differences, with a balanced treatment of disputed issues, and without partisanship or rancor, then the foundations of the University enterprise are imperiled.

Preserving the confidence of the people of Texas and the United States is the unceasing task of university leaders, faculty, and staff. Maintaining the public trust requires in part that student instruction be founded on rigorous scholarship, charity toward dissenting views, and integrity in how faculty handle contentious issues.

Academic Integrity and Teaching

Academic integrity obligates the instructor to protect every student’s academic freedom and right to learn in an environment of open inquiry. This includes the responsibilities:

• to foster classroom cultures of trust in which all students feel free to voice their questions and beliefs, especially when those perspectives might conflict with those of the instructor or other students;
• to fairly present differing views and scholarly evidence on reasonably disputed matters and unsettled issues;
• to equip students to assess competing theories and claims, and to use reason and appropriate evidence to form their own conclusions about course material; and
• to eschew topics and controversies that are not germane to the course.

One of our faculty colleagues has cogently described what this means for students: “within the classroom, it should include access to knowledge through competent instruction, freedom from indoctrination and harassment, freedom to take reasoned exception to the views of professors, fair evaluation by professors, and expectations that views expressed in class will not be disclosed beyond it.”⁴

While the lessons and perspectives cultivated in the classroom can be applied in the world beyond, the classroom itself is reserved for inquiry and learning. Outside the classroom, faculty and students enjoy all rights of expression guaranteed by the Constitution. In these ways, academic integrity reinforces democratic citizenship and self-government. As the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1967, “The classroom is peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth ‘out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.’”⁵

To encourage this marketplace of ideas, universities should be rigorous but inviting places, in which scholars and students holding divergent convictions are not merely tolerated but welcomed. Critical thinking requires the capacity to assimilate diverse perspectives and listen to and weigh challenging views. This leads to the ability to persuade by expressing one’s own convictions with civility and reasoned argument.

At its core, academic integrity forges a solemn trust between the instructor and the students, and between the university and the state and nation. It is that trust that we reaffirm here. And it is that trust that will continue to ensure that what starts here changes the world.

Signatories from the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Working Group on Academic Integrity:

• Scott Aaronson (College of Natural Sciences)
• Keffrelyn Brown (College of Education)
• Noël Busch-Armendariz (School of Social Work)
• Courtney Byrd (Moody College of Communication)
• Steve Collis (School of Law)
• Michael Drew (College of Natural Sciences)
• Janet Dukerich (McCombs School of Business)
• Zach Elkins (College of Liberal Arts)
• Patricio Fernandez (College of Liberal Arts and School of Civic Leadership)
• Sheena Greitens (LBJ School of Public Affairs)
• David Leal (College of Liberal Arts)
• Cristine Legare (College of Liberal Arts)
• David Mohrig (Jackson School of Geosciences)
• Richard Reddick (College of Education)
• Mark Regnerus (College of Liberal Arts)
• Ryan Russell (Cockrell School of Engineering)
• Mukul Sharma (Cockrell School of Engineering)
• Sheridan Titman (McCombs School of Business)
• Karen Willcox (Cockrell School of Engineering)
• Cara Young (School of Nursing)

¹ In that spirit, we reaffirm the Chicago Principles, already adopted by our Board of Regents, including the admonition that “without a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry, a university ceases to be a university.”
² Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of State of N.Y., 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967).
³ 1940 AAUP Statement. Similarly, in 1967 the AAUP declared that “Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom.”
⁴ David M. Rabban, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2024), 292.
⁵ Keyishian, 385 U.S. at 603 (Internal citations omitted).