HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE LINKAGE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND FACULTY TENURE

The linkage of the defense of academic freedom with the concern for job security is examined in this study. The linkage was established in written form in the AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure. In it principles of academic freedom were codified and the practice of academic tenure judicialized. The study focused on the academic freedom committee work undertaken between 1913 and 1917 and the three reports produced by the committee process during that time. The hypothesis of the study, upheld by the research, was that the origins of the linkage of academic freedom and tenure reflect the pressures on the profession for improved status as much as for self-defense.; The individuals interested in the cause of academic freedom just prior to World War I were concerned with what they perceived as the diminishing status of the academic profession. The historical evidence shows a small and self-confident group of leading professors caught up in the vision of an academic governance system in which the real power of decision would be in the hands of academics like themselves. The academic freedom documents which codified judicialized tenure were not concerned with the defense of academic freedom in toto. Nor was an argument established that permanent tenure constituted an adequate or sufficient defense of academic freedom. Therefore objections can be raised to an appeal to the historic argument for the inviolable linkage of academic freedom and tenure. The study illuminates the motivation for the founding of the AAUP and the introduction of judicialized tenure through use of original correspondence and other primary documents produced by the professors who enacted those events.