The Research On Protection Of Academic Rights For College Professors In The United States Of America

After the American Revolutionary War, the higher education in the US entered into a brand-new development epoch. The universities of America set out to take the development pattern of German universities as reference. These universities attache importance to the combination of teaching and research and also pay attention to the role of the professors in the academic field, which avails the appearance of modern universities, such as University of Cornell, University of Stanford, University of Chicago and others. Along with the increasingly strengthening of the relationship between the university and society, persons from industrial and commercial circles become the main members of board of directors of university and the contradiction from science and wealth as well as the contradiction from academy and interests became more and more prominent. When the professors were continually fired, the security of occupational can not be guaranteed.In the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, the Association of American University Professors, the American Association on Education and other civil organizations made unremitting effort. These groups established the academic tenure of professors, the due process system of firing teachers and the negotiation system between teacher’s union and the collectivity. In a fairly long period, the occupational security of university faculty was the crucial content of the academic rights for university professors in the US.After the World War II, the cases which involved the academic rights of university professors increased vastly among the cases which were tried by the federal court and the local courts. Without merely involving the occupational security of the university professors, these cases involve much more freedom of expression for professors. As the right of free speech is the premise and the basis for achieving occupational security, therefore the protection of the freedom of speech is of great significance to the achievement of the academic rights for professors.Through quoting the First Amendment and the Fourteen Amendment of Constitution, and making explanation, the federal court finally established the status that the academic freedom shall be protected by constitution by safeguarding the legal free speech of professors in the Sweezy v. New Hampshire in 1957.In the 1990s, the case of Marie E. Wirsing and the case of Dilawar M. Edwards presents that the clash between the academic expression rights for individual scholar and the autonomous rights of universities and in 2006 the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos put forward the issue whether speeches which are expressed on the basis of official duties from the professors of public universities shall be protected by the First Amendment of Constitution. After the promulgation of the American Anti-Terrorism, the privacy right, the free speech right and the freedom of academic research will be impacted and the popularization of the network information also brings about the new challenge of the basic rights protection. Thus, the protection of the academic rights for the American university professors will be a progress of constantly conflicting and developing.By means of making a study of the materials of American academic freedom, I find out that the domestic researches on academic freedom mainly focus on the comprehensive research on academic freedom which carry out the discussion of the academic freedom for individuals of faculty, the university autonomy and the freedom of learning and fail to carry out discussion of the academic rights of some body individually. This thesis will give discussion on the academic rights of the American university professors from two aspects of occupational security protection and academic expression freedom and hope that this thesis will have innovation and development in combination of constitution guarantee and institutional guarantee.