When the brain perceives danger, the autonomic nervous system responds with the impulse of flight or fight. As a new academic year begins, this is not a time for tenured professors to cut and run. The media has provided a steady supply of stories of academics leaving the country because the work environment and domestic politics have become unbearable for them. Ironically, when compared to workers in the private and public sectors, tenured faculty enjoy the privilege of job security.
Professors depend on U.S. taxpayers to fund their research and teaching. At land-grant universities, this includes a commitment to provide extension services to benefit society writ large from farmers and youth to local industry to address distinct but related issues such as health, food systems and innovation. As such, professors who have studied and earned their research reputations and salary in a U.S. institution have both an ethical and a fiduciary responsibility to the individual citizen who paid their taxes and this individual’s children who are students.
Tenure is a social contract. Based on expertise, a professor is expected to speak up for the “common good.” Academic freedom does not begin with the liberty to express one’s ideas. Instead, it starts with the autonomy to search for facts, knowledge and — dare I say — “truth.” Then, freedom of expression becomes the necessary second step, but not as an end in itself. Rather, it is a part of the process of fulfilling the “public trust” in a democratic society, even if the ideas expressed may be unpopular to the establishment. Tenure is hard-earned because the individual must be self-critical and honest about their biases and the weaknesses of their work. Therefore, when a tenured professor chooses to share their cumulative insights with students or the public, it is because they have something valuable to say.
Our youth, as individuals and as a collective, dwell simultaneously within the past, present and future. This positionality enables them to right past injustices and mistakes, thereby transforming the society in which they live while envisioning new possibilities for the future. To achieve this grounding, they require an education that not only values critical reasoning but also the capacities for creative imagination and the empathetic ability to place oneself in the place of the other. This trinity of capacities — critical reasoning, imagination and empathy — is not only imparted in classroom learning but inculcated through the actions of their professors.
A telling moment of the failure of professors to guide students with practical wisdom is conveyed in the voices of young men in the acclaimed novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. Set during World War I, a group of young idealists who enlisted to defend the fatherland are having a poignant conversation in a communal latrine. In an intimate biological moment, they talk about how their teachers persuaded them to enlist but had not prepared them for the stark brutality of war. If professors have the right to academic freedom, then we have the responsibility to demonstrate it to our students by our deeds.
By the 1900s, Germany had advanced the notion of tenure much like the U.S. has today. However, with the rise of fascist ideology in the 1930s, open scholarship became a threat. “Down with intellectuals” was a common chant recited across Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Even parts of France succumbed. Similarly, Stalin’s Soviet Union was not unlike its Nazi opponents. Hate is very intimate, seducing people into behaving exactly like their adversaries. We see this playing out in front of our eyes today.
Under such conditions of fear, two types of academics emerge. Those who do well and those who do good. Those who do well are rewarded for their silence and acquiescence. Whilst scholars who seek to do good are denounced for their words and actions. This is why historically there are so few of them.
President Donald Trump and his enablers are not going away. They are here to stay, by force, if necessary. Do not forget the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the subsequent pardons. The Supreme Court is stacked to bend to the Trump administration’s will. Key military commanders have been replaced. Critical government employees have been fired or laid off. Institutions of learning are besieged and are negotiating terms of surrender.
However, this all-pervading menace cannot last indefinitely; it will ultimately collapse under its own weight. Historically, fascists cannibalize each other, as seen among cancel culture fanatics. This is when the work we have done to empower students will become invaluable to rebuild a just and environmentally sustainable nation from the ruins of cruelty and greed. The Great Seal of the United States espouses the principle of pluralism — E pluribus unum or “from the many one.” Professors need to hold their ground and defend intellectual pluralism because it is foundational for a thriving democracy.
Professor Karim-Aly Kassam is Freedom of Expression Public Voices Fellow with the Einaudi International Center. He is faculty in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment as well as the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program. He can be reached at karim-aly.kassam@cornell.edu.
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