1. Mecklin, John, My Quest for Freedom (New York, 1945), pp. 132–134.Google ScholarSkillman, David Bishop, The Biography of A College: Being the History of the First Century of the Life of Lafayette College, 2 vols. (Easton, Pa., 1932), 2:49.Google Scholar

2. Skillman, , Biography of a College, 2:119–137.Google Scholar

3. Mecklin, , Quest, pp. 1–148.Google ScholarSkillman, , Biography of a College, 2:195.Google Scholar

4. Mecklin, , Quest, pp. 148–156.Google Scholar“The Case of Professor Mecklin: Report of the Committee of Inquiry of the American Philosophical Association and the American Psychological Association,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 11 (01 1914): 75.Google Scholar

5. Mecklin, , Quest, pp. 156–165.Google ScholarSkillman, , Biography of a College, 2:194–199.Google Scholar

6. Novak, Steven J., The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt, 1798–1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Letter of Mecklin, John M., 11 09 1913, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 10 (09 1913): 559–560. He addressed a similar letter to Science, which also took a leading role in fostering the organization of the AAUP.Google Scholar

8. “The Case of Professor Mecklin,” pp. 67–81.Google Scholar

9. Mecklin, , Quest, pp. 133–134.Google ScholarCompare “Case of Professor Mecklin,” p. 74.Google Scholar

10. Skillman, , Biography of a College, 2:198–203.Google ScholarIn 1915 Warfield became president of Wilson College, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a Presbyterian women's college where he served another lengthy tenure.Google Scholar

11. Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955), pp. 472–474.Google ScholarThe majority of cases had to do with dismissals that were alleged to be connected with a professor's political views. Religion cases, however, were the second leading concern. Among the half dozen or so cases that were current at the time the AAUP was founded was one other having to do with religion in which a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut was dismissed and alleged it was for remarks he made in a public speech opposing Sabbatarianism (p. 479).Google Scholar

12. Lovejoy, Arthur O., “Organization of the American Association of University Professors,” Science 41 (29 01 1915): 151–154.CrossRefGoogle ScholarOn the background of the AAUP and academic freedom in America see Hofstadter and Metzger, Academic Freedom. Veysey, Laurence, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), also provides important background. I am also indebted to Darryl G. Hart for his background work on this subject. My own summation of the background will appear in The Soul of the American University.Google Scholar

13. As early as 1902 Dewey, John had already enunciated most of the views that became standard in the AAUP in “Academic Freedom,” Educational Review 23 (01 1902): 1–14,Google Scholarreproduced in The American Concept of Academic Freedom in Formation: A Collection of Essays and Reports, edited by Metzger, Walter P. (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

14. Dewey, John, “The American Association of University Professors: Introductory Address,” Science 41 (29 01 1915): 148–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Ibid.

16. “General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,” Presented at the annual meeting of the association, 31 Dec. 1915.Google ScholarReproduced in Metzger, , American Concept, from Bulletin of the American Assocation of University Professors 1 (1915): 28.Google ScholarMembership was originally confined to full professors “of recognized scholarship or scientific productivity” and by nomination only. Lovejoy, “Organization,” p. 152.Google ScholarThis requirement apparently had the side effect of helping to ensure that a progressive religious stance would dominate the organization. According to the surveys reported in Leuba, James, The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (Chicago, 1916 [repr. 1921]), pp. 252–279, strikingly larger numbers of eminent leaders in academic fields professed skepticism concerning traditional religious beliefs than did “lesser” persons in the same fields.Google Scholar

17. “Committee on Academic Freedom,” pp. 17–43.Google Scholar

18. Day, James, “The Professors's Union,” quoted in School and Society 3 (29 01 1916): 175.Google ScholarDewey, John dismissed such views as “literally appalling when they come from the head of a university, for, acted upon, they mean the death of American scholarship.” Dewey, “Is the College Professor a ‘Hired Man’?” Literary Digest 51 (10 07 1915): 65.Google ScholarBoth quoted in Hofstadter, and Metzger, , Academic Freedom, p. 482.Google Scholar

19. On the AAC see Hawkins, Hugh, Banding Together: The Rise of National Associations in American Higher Education, 1887–1950 (Baltimore, 1992).Google ScholarHawkins documents the impulse toward nationalization and standardization among academic administrators, but deals little with the AAUP.Google Scholar

20. “Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of Office,” Bulletin, Association of American Colleges 3 (04 1917): 49–50.Google Scholar

21. By 1922 the AAC's Academic Freedom Commission had conceded most points to the AAUP and in 1940 the AAC's approval was crucial to the canonization of the AAUP's 1940 report. Hofstadter, and Metzger, , Academic Freedom, pp. 485–487.Google Scholar

22. Metzger, Walter P., “The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” Law and Contemporary Problems 53:3 (1990): 3–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarOn the legal standing of academic freedom see the entire issue of Law and Contemporary Problems and Metzger, Walter P., ed., The Constitutional Status of Academic Freedom (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

23. “Academic Freedom and Tenure: 1940 Statement of Principles and [1970] Interpretive Comments,” AAUP Policy Documents and Reports (Washington, D. C., 1973), reproduced in Metzger, , ed., The American Concept.Google Scholar

24. Gruber, Carl S., “Mars and Minerva: World War I and the American Academic Man” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1968).Google Scholar

25. Schrecker, Ellen W., No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

26. An example of the rhetoric of the 1950s is found in Maclver, Robert M., Academic Freedom in Our Time (New York, 1955), a volume which was part of the American Academic Freedom Project at Columbia University.Google ScholarWith reference to the religious issue, for instance, Maclver states on page 138: “Those who advocate that the university should take a definitely religious stand are in their proselytizing zeal committing themselves to a total perversion of the function of the university. They would revert to the intellectual confusion of earlier times, when a superimposed prior ‘truth’ retarded the advance of knowledge and thus tended to imprison the inquiring mind. To make the university a center for the propagation of any creed, of any system of values that divides group from group, is to destroy the special quality and the unique mission of the university as a center for the free pursuit of knowledge wherever it may lead.”Google Scholar

27. For a helpful discussion of the problems inherent in the concept of academic freedom see Pincoffs, Edmund L., ed., The Concept of Academic Freedom (Austin, Tex., 1972).Google ScholarPincoffs for instance remarks in his introduction, “When a professor or a student claims that he is entitled to academic freedom he is generally understood to be claiming the right to pursue the truth unhindered. This understanding is nearly as vague and full of difficulties as the general understanding that the summum bonum is happiness,” p. viii.Google Scholar

28. McConnell, Michael W., “Academic Freedom in Religious Colleges and Universities,” Law and Contemporary Problems 53:3 (1990): 308–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. I am not hereby endorsing postmodernist epistemology as my own, although I think it is correct in its critique of claims toward scientific objectivity. If one starts with the premises of the purely naturalistic worldviews that usually define the permissible limits of academic inquiry, then postmodernist skepticism about both normative scientific and moral claims seems to me to be the most consistent conclusion. If, however, one believes, as I do, that humans are not the primary creators of reality, then, while one may acknowledge the community-relative character of science and morality, belief in a creator who has created both us and reality throws into an entirely different context questions concerning epistemology, science, and the superiority of some human beliefs to others.Google ScholarFish, Stanley, in “There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing Too,” Boston Review (02 1992): 3–4, 23–26, for instance, provides a very persuasive account of how questions of free speech on campus reduce to issues of political power.Google ScholarSince, however, he reduces all questions of values to issues of political power, he is pointing out the bleak prospects for those who insist on a purely naturalistic worldview. Except for the powerful, they have no attractive way to settle disputes over what the higher “goods” that bound our “freedom” should be.Google Scholar

30. Church-related institutions may, of course, be serving the public as well. The crucial question is which of these commitments is primary in determining their self-definition.Google Scholar

31. Current, Richard Nelson, Phi Beta Kappa in American Life: The First Two Hundred Years (New York, 1990), pp. 210–218, provides a very frank account of such policies.Google ScholarBrigham Young University was also denied membership explicitly on such grounds, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 06 1992, p. A4.Google Scholar

32. Popular conceptions of the proper meaning of “pluralism” contribute to such pressure. In 1992 admissions officers from at least seven leading universities informed the Westminster Schools, Atlanta, that they regarded their policy of hiring only Christian teachers to be discriminatory. Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 Dec. 1992, p. A6. Such attitudes themselves are examples of discrimination against religious groups who believe their schools should retain a distinct identity.Google Scholar

33. Bowden, Henry W., Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1876–1918 (Carbondale, Ill., 1971 [repr. 1991]), pp. 239–245.Google Scholar

34. I have elaborated on these questions in my contribution to the forum, “The Decade Ahead in Scholarship,” Religion and American Culture 3:1 (1993): 9–15, which may be taken as a companion piece to this one.Google ScholarI do not mean to suggest that all scholarship must involve frankly stated faith commitments. The degree of explicitness depends on the audience. My point is that scholarship explicitly related to faith may be as responsible as any other scholarship and so should not be discriminated against, particularly not in the name of “academic freedom.”Google Scholar