5.1 Academic Freedom
As a state supported university, UHV is a public trust. Its administrators have a responsibility to the citizens of Texas to assure the intellectual freedom of its faculty in conducting research and in instruction. Academic freedom is the cornerstone of public universities and is the most important value in assuring that knowledge advances, is effectively taught and learned and is used to enhance society. The UH-System Board of Regents Policy is available online in Policy 21.03: Academic Freedom.
The university faculty’s most fundamental purposes are to advance human knowledge, transmit and nurture human understanding and use knowledge to serve society. University faculty can best expand human knowledge, provide the highest level of education to students and use expertise to improve society when they are free to responsibly investigate, teach, and provide their expertise without restraint from persons or agencies who might seek to suppress or discourage them in their professional work. Academic freedom, then, is a vital prerequisite for research and scholarship, for a university education and for the application of expertise in the larger community. The following applies the concept of academic freedom to university faculty in their roles as scholars and researchers, as teachers, and in their professional service to the larger community.
5.1.1 Scholarly Activity and Research
University faculty are experts in one or more curricular areas. Each area of the higher education curriculum has a base of knowledge and skills but is also dynamic and constantly expanding and undergoing redefinition. Innovative faculty are often leaders in the generation of new knowledge and the refinement of existing knowledge. They participate in examining, re-examining, defining, re-defining, studying and re-studying, creating and re-creating within and across curricular areas. The unfettered capacity to responsibly examine, explore, debate, reflect and investigate is both a principle and a prerequisite to achieving the greatest advances in knowledge, skill and expression. Academic freedom encourages faculty in this vigorous process with the result that American university education is the most prestigious and sought- after education system in the world. Its prestige rests on academic freedom. Fear of political or other pressures by those who would limit academic freedom can and does sharply reduce the productivity of faculty as they engage in their research and scholarly work. University administrators have an obligation to assure faculty that they will strongly and consistently support the freedom of their faculty to engage in this important part of their professional role.
5.1.2 Teaching
Students and faculty participate together in a community of learning. Learning at UHV, a public university, occurs through examination, discussion, debate, and reflection together. The expertise of the faculty and their standards of student achievement are vital. Learning within a university is most productive when faculty can select learning materials freely, can articulate their expertise as they see fit and when they and their students are free to question, think, reconsider, explore and acquire knowledge and skills without fear of reprisal and without threat. Since human knowledge is dynamic and constantly expanding, university administrators need to be committed to ensuring that their faculty and students can engage one another in learning even when doing so involves new, emerging and controversial areas of study and discourse. University administrators should ensure that faculty and students can learn openly through discussion, debate, and exposure to as broad a range of media and literature as their faculty deem appropriate.
5.1.3 Service
Universities and their faculty have significant responsibilities to the larger community. Faculty are frequently asked to apply their expertise to challenges in scientific, business, economic, cultural, educational, governmental and other settings and to address individual concerns.
The academic freedom that is the cornerstone of scholarship and research and teaching within the university is of significant benefit to society. Faculty who responsibly share their expertise must be free to do so whether or not their insights and knowledge agree with accepted opinion. Those agencies and individuals who seek faculty expertise must be confident that the faculty member’s professional judgments are of the highest quality and as free of bias from special interests or a priori thinking as possible.