INTRODUCTION:
THE WESTERN UNIVERSITY ON TRIAL

John W. Chapman

Western universities have been on trial in one way or another for nearly twenty years. And it seems certain that trials will go on for some time to come. Both the moral and the intellectual integrity of the Western university are under fire, from within and from without, by those who would politicize, moralize, or deform an institution whose primary allegiance is to cognitive rationality, to disciplined search for truths. Many truths are bound to be offensive or unwelcome to some faith or conviction, to some material or cultural interests, or to ideologies resistant to rational criticism. And faculty members are reluctant to apply to one another academic criteria and standards that they know are valid and to which they are professionally committed. Given the sort of creatures that we are, perhaps it could not be otherwise.

The Educational and Expressive Revolutions

The modern Western university, devoted to science and scholarship, is an achievement of a liberal civilization. That civilization is essentially procedural in its ways of thinking about nature and society. No other civilization—not the Chinese, Indian, or Islamic—invented an institution specialized for intellectual endeavor; this is unique to the West. Although it has Greek and medieval antecedents, the modern university is the culmination of an educational revolution that followed closely upon the Western

political and economic revolutions. All these revolutions, as well as the earlier scientific revolution, have a common origin in the liberal unleashing of human rationality and individuality.

But we are not purely and thoroughly rational animals. Nor are we monistic, unitary beings. We are only imperfectly rational, and we are both individualistic and collectivistic in our sentiments and activities. Endless debate about human nature, and the different historical shapes that human personality has taken, should alert us to our fundamental contrariety.

Aristotle called us the political animal. The great German sociologist Max Weber held that we are deeply religious. And the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz defines us as cultural artifacts, inherently ideological and seekers of meaning in life. The late John Plamenatz of All Souls thought that our political experience reveals our ideological bent. Other Oxford political philosophers, Sir Isaiah Berlin and Professor Charles Taylor, speak of "expressivism" and point to an "expressivist revolution." This is understood as an essentially emotive and holistic revulsion—Romantic in inspiration—against the analytic, utilitarian rationalism of the Enlightenment. Liberal rationality and individuality have built societies that generate craving for communitarian warmth. Egalitarian cooperation tends to displace competitive differentiation as the human ideal. Taylor says that, "Deep expressivist dissatisfaction contributed to the success of Fascism, and underlies the revolt of many young people against the 'system' in contemporary countries."^[1]

I suggest that from the record of our moral, political, and cultural experience one inference at least is clear and incontrovertible. Human beings are deeply ambivalent creatures, endowed with diverse and divergent needs, inclinations, and potentialities. We are pluralistic and "unfinished" in Geertz's diagnosis of our condition. And because we are, perhaps we had to become rational to gain some kind of balanced, integrated modicum of unity, some kind of personal and cultural stability, always precarious. Would it be too much to say that we are deeply Hegelian beings, doomed to a historical quest for moral and political equilibrium? Surely our essential and enduring ambivalence was captured by Charles Frankel when he said, "Man is the social animal that seeks privacy."^[2]

In this psychological perspective the near coincidence of the educational and expressivist revolutions is no mere historical accident. This coincidence is the outcome of the tension between our individuated rationality and our desire for spiritual unity and moral significance. Indeed our contemporary predicament, including the trials of the Western university, is inherent in our ambiguous human nature.

[1] Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 138.

[2] Quoted by J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 508.

I offer these rather philosophical reflections to illuminate our situation. As the intellectual institution par excellence , the modern Western university is certain to face resistance from other and competing human tendencies. Still history shows that equally powerful is the human need to build and to secure an institution devoted to intellectual effort. For creatures constituted as we are, the only hope for a life worth living is to institutionalize a differentiated and balanced way of life in which all our intrinsic impulses have their appropriate places and avenues of expression. Human personality is multidimensional, difficult to equilibrate. So any truly human society must strive for equipoise of autonomous institutions and repel contamination of its intellectual institutions by extraneous impulse.

Trial As Tribulation and Test

The trial of the Western university consists not only of present tribulations. The academic profession is on trial also in the sense that it is incumbent on our profession to put the university in order, to restore its intellectual integrity, and to hold fast to academic ideals and obligations. If we do not, the universities will face further and probably intensified public disapproval and political intervention, however unintelligent and damaging these attitudes and actions may be.

With reference to recent drastic cuts of university funding in Britain, Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer comments, "I think they reflect a belief that the university system needs to reform itself, and the only way it can be forced to reform itself is by financial pressure."^[3] In western Europe, the United States, and Australia politicians exhibit a similar mood of hostility and suspicion. In the United States these feelings are directed in particular at the social sciences and the humanities, as shown in proposals to decrease severely their federal support and in the Reagan administration's apparent insensitivity to the long-term implications, both scientific and political, of its proposed measures.^[4] The very cultural vitality of the United States—and of Britain, as David Martin discusses in chapter 13—may be at stake.

[3] Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, "Prospects for Higher Education," London Review of Books 3 (19 November – 2 December 1981): 9. To underline the seriousness of the British situation, Sir Peter raises the specter of an act of parliament that would retrospectively abolish the practice of academic tenure.

[4] On the condition of American social science, see Kenneth Prewitt and David L. Sills, "Federal Funding for the Social Sciences: Threats and Responses," Items 35 (September 1981): 33–47; and Kenneth Prewitt, "Annual Report of the President: 1980–81," Annual Report: 1980–1981 (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1981), pp. 1–15. On the place of the humanities in American education and culture, see Report of the Commission on the Humanities, The Humanities in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). On the implications and consequences of federal policies, see two articles by Fred M. Hechinger in the New York Times : "Graduate Schools' Decline Leads to Wide Concern" (28 July 1981), and "Fulbright Grants Are in Danger" (17 November 1981). Consult also Robert Reinhold, "Research Fares Well, but Aid for Students Is Cut," New York Times (7 February 1982); Michael I. Sovern, "The Case for Keeping U.S. Aid to Colleges," New York TimesMagazine (7 February 1982). Although federal budget cuts were not as large as earlier anticipated, according to Sovern investment in research and higher education is well below what is needed to sustain cultural vitality and ensure industrial survival.

That Western publics and politicians should look askance at the universities is not unreasonable. Students once went on expressivist rampages, the outbreak of which was quite unexpected, and the causes of which remain mysterious to many.^[5] In the United States and elsewhere, faculty became careless about the obligations that derive from academic ethos and citizenship.^[6] In Europe governments imposed or tolerated "democratization" of universities, the consequences of which are examined by Peter Graf Kielmansegg (chapter 3) and Arend Lijphart (chapter 17); and in the United States the federal bureaucracy invaded the autonomy of universities to force application of nonintellectual criteria of appointment.^[7] Moreover, university officers of administration failed to discharge their responsibility for the integrity of the appointive process. They did not insist that their faculties appoint only the best available persons according to the criterion of competitive merit. In consequence, a kind of localized nepotistic preferentialism became the operative appointment policy of many American universities.^[8]

In the United States further deviations from professional discipline include the following: application of political criteria to candidates for appointment, especially to persons who have served their country in a political capacity^[9] (although politicization of appointment has not by any means

[5] Interpretations of the student rampages as essentially "expressive" phenomena are offered by: Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, The American University (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); Edward Shils, "Plenitude and Scarcity: The Anatomy of an International Cultural Crisis," in The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 265–97; David Martin, "Mutations: Religio-Political Crisis and the Collapse of Puritanism and Humanism," in Universities in the Western World , ed. Paul Seabury (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 85–97; my "Personality and Privacy," in Privacy: Nomos XIII , ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: Atherton Press, 1971), pp. 236–55; and my "The Liberal University and the Future of Liberalism," in Say Not the Struggle: Essays in Honour of A. D. Gorwala , 2nd ed., ed. H. M. Patel (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 113–33.

[6] On academic citizenship and ethos, see Edward Shils, "The Academic Ethos Under Strain," in Seabury, Universities , pp. 16–46, and Shils, "Academic Freedom and Academic Obligations with Some Thoughts on Permanent Tenure" (Paper presented at the I.C.F.U. Symposium on University Autonomy and Academic Freedom in a Free Society, Glen Cove, N.Y., 24 October 1981).

[7] On European "democratization" see also German Universities Commission, Report on German Universities (New York: I.C.F.U., 1978), and Italian Universities Commission, Report on Italian Universities (New York: I.C.F.U., 1981). The American policy of affirmative action is analyzed by Edward Shils in "Government and Universities in the United States: The Eighth Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities," Minerva 17 (Spring 1979): 129–77. Consult also Roger A. Freeman, "Uncle Sam's Heavy Hand in Education," National Review (4 August 1978), p. 946 ff.; and John H. Bunzel, "Affirmative Action, Negative Results," Encounter (November 1979), pp. 43–51.

[8] This appointive policy at the University of Pittsburgh is described in my "Tenure in the American University," I.C.F.U. Newsletter 6 (March 1979): 1–4.

[9] See Sidney Hook, "The 'Radical' Tilt Against Academic Freedom," Measure no. 50(Spring 1980), pp. 1–2. (Measure is published by University Centers for Rational Alternatives, New York, N.Y.).

gone so far in the United States as it has in western Europe); faculty unionization, ostensibly for financial benefit and a greater share in university government, but in reality to legitimate defiance of the criterion of competitive merit; vast disequilibrium between supply and demand for academics, encouraged in part by the easy acquisition of tenured positions; toleration of deviation from academic morality in the form of political indoctrination and recruitment of students; grade inflation or equalization, which amounts to a refusal to perform the crucial professional duty of evaluation (in chapter 12 Allan Bloom explores the moral significance of this refusal); well-publicized instances of fraudulent scientific research; and willingness to cater to student demand for courses in academically dubious subjects.^[10]

All this testifies to a disconcerting decline of professional morale and discipline. Small wonder then that politicians display contempt and the public loses confidence.

The Principle of Competitive Collaboration

The Western academic world is a vast, unplanned and spontaneous order that operates on a principle of competitive collaboration in the advance of understanding.^[11] This principle is an expression of the "instrumental activism" and "institutionalized individualism" that Talcott Parsons and Gerald Platt discern at the heart of Western liberal civilization.^[12] In the case of the academic enterprise, its success depends upon commitments to intellectual objectivity and the criterion of competitive excellence. These are the professional commitments required to run the process of competitive collaboration, without which it slows and stalls. But fidelity to intellectual objectivity and achievement tends to weaken in an expressive and egalitarian age.^[13] Respect for individual freedom and equal opportunity wanes as conceptions of liberal equality and social justice come to pervade the climate of opinion.

Paradoxically, in such an emotional climate private interests are let loose

[10] As Bernice Martin points out: "Women and ethnic minorities especially come to be treated as special ascriptive categories with their own world view, value system, and self-oriented subject matter. Women's studies, Black studies, and the like deny the possibility of objectivity, comparability, and equality in scholarship" ("The Mining of the Ivory Tower," in Seabury, Universities , p. 110).

[11] For a superb analysis of the different kinds of knowledge, see Fritz Machlup, Knowledge and Knowledge Production (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).

[12] Parsons and Platt, American University , pp. 42–43.

[13] On objectivity, see Charles Frankel, "Intellectual Foundations of Liberalism," in Seminar Reports: Liberalism and Liberal Education: Western Perspectives 5 (Fall 1976): 3–11 (published by the Program of General Education in the Humanities, Columbia University); on competitive merit, Bryan Wilson, Introduction to Education Equality and Society , ed. Bryan Wilson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), pp. 11–38.

and tend to disintegrate professional discipline. The meritocratic university is redefined as a democratic association whose members are entitled to govern it as they see fit. But they share an interest in security of employment, which they convert into a right; academic tenure becomes an earned right. In this way, principles basic to the internal morality of the university, namely, equality of opportunity and fair evaluation, are discounted or discarded. Various forms of preferential appointment tend to displace appointment on the basis of competitive merit, a policy that runs directly contrary to the ethos of the Western university. As Edward Shils puts it: "The claims of ethnic or social origin, of political sympathy, of friendship and of mere seniority or presence and of patronage must be studiously expelled from all consideration when appointments and promotions are discussed and decided. This follows automatically from the commitment of universities to the ideal realm of understanding of the world, of man and his works. Anything less is treason."^[14]

How did we arrive at this situation? What can be done about it? These are the questions I propose to answer. I begin by presenting the constitutional structure and morality of the Western university, particularly as they are displayed in its American variant. Then I shall attempt to explain why universities have drifted away from constitutionality, indeed why most academic institutions have failed to become fully constitutionalized. This diagnosis will lead us to an appraisal of remedial prescriptions.

Constitutional Structure and Morality

My constitutional analysis has to do primarily with the American version of the Western university.^[15] Fundamental principles of university autonomy and academic freedom are, of course, common to Western universities. These principles derive ultimately from freedom of the mind, as Raymond Polin eloquently argues in chapter 2. American and European universities differ mainly in matters of internal organization and appointive authority, and the differences are not all that great. In the United States, faculties propose candidates for appointment, and university officers rule on the proposal; in Europe this final authority is ministerial. Here I am not concerned with deviations by continental universities from academic constitutionality, namely, the democratization and politicization that began in Germany and spread to Denmark and the Netherlands.

The constitution of the American university is an interlocking structure of principles, practices, procedures, rights, responsibilities, and rather imprecisely specified obligations. Each and all of these derive their justifica-

[14] Shils, "Government and Universities," p. 176.

[15] Illuminating comparisons of American and western European universities are offered by Joseph Ben-David, American Higher Education: Directions Old and New (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972). An unsurpassed statement of general constitutional principle is Robert M. MacIver's Academic Freedom in Our Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955).

tion from their contribution to the primary purpose of the university as an intellectual institution, intellectual progress. (We need not here consider the cognate purposes of the university, which include undergraduate education, professional training, and provision of various services to society and government, mainly by way of research and consultation.) The distinctive purpose of the Western university is to maximize the advance of understanding in the broadest sense, that is to say, to discover relations in both the natural and human realms of experience, as distinguished from the accumulation of uninterpreted data. Significant truth in the form of theory is the academic objective, as Nikolaus Lobkowicz points out (chapter 1), and the road to this objective is the use of reliable procedures of a systematic and scientific nature.

Institutionalized intellectual autonomy, understood as the right of the best qualified to define and to perform academic tasks without social or political interference, is the most fundamental of all constitutional principles. For without intellectual autonomy—freedom of the mind—there could be no institution that we would recognize as a university. The fundamental presumption is that intellectual may be distinguished from political activity. Even though intellectual work may and does have profound political consequences, it is not done for political purposes.

Next is the principle of political and philosophical neutrality. By political neutrality I mean that no genuine university as a corporate entity may adopt a partisan political position or take a stand on a political issue, even in the case of a deeply unpopular war. Of course, individual faculty members may do so as private persons and citizens. This is the external or political dimension of academic freedom. No academic may be rightfully penalized for exercising rights of citizenship. Still a decent regard for the obligations of academic citizenship is called for in political pronouncements.

Philosophical neutrality implies that no genuine university may espouse any particular philosophical or moral doctrine. In a practical way, intellectual, social, and political pluralism—characteristic of a liberal society—preclude philosophical partisanship. More fundamentally, philosophical conformity or uniformity are incompatible with freedom of inquiry. Again individuals may adopt and expound philosophies of life and ultimate reality as they best see fit, and do so in their academic capacity. Indeed much of social and political philosophy involves attempts to grasp and to define our cultural and political situation. Dispute and inconclusiveness are to be expected, as are the appropriate detachment and objectivity that the academic ethos demands, whatever the matter under consideration.

Academic Freedom and Tenure

The principles of corporate autonomy and neutrality are the foundations on which are erected the institutional right to academic freedom and the institutionalized privilege of academic tenure, the specifically academic form of professional autonomy.

The right to academic freedom is a complex right. It is obviously not fundamental in the sense that natural, human, or constitutional rights are fundamental. Rather it is an institutionalized professional right, a right of office. But it is far more important than most institutionalized rights. For academic freedom partakes of a fundamental natural or human right insofar as it is "an aspect of equality of opportunity."^[16] And equality of opportunity is simply an alternative formulation of the basic liberal natural right to freedom. In the liberal perspective the right to academic freedom is of supreme worth to those who desire to participate in the academic process of competitive collaboration.

This analysis of academic freedom accords with Robert M. MacIver's views. He identifies three dimensions of academic freedom: institutional, professional, and functional. Its functional dimension is the most significant. According to MacIver, the professional academic "is first and foremost engaged in the pursuit and communication of knowledge. This function is a community service, and its importance can hardly be overestimated. . . . It is a service to his country, a service to civilization, a service to mankind."^[17]

An institutional right that derives from the fundamental purpose of the university, that partakes of the liberal equal right to freedom, and that also has utilitarian justification in John Stuart Mill's vision of man as a progressive being—this is a right of a very special kind. As such it cannot be confined to a claim to inquire and to teach in accordance with one's understanding of the truth, as many would define the right. This is but the core of the right. Nor can its acquisition be tainted by the extraneous considerations that Edward Shils so forcefully condemns. If ever a right depended for its acquisition upon demonstration of excellence—and to be excellent means to excel—it is the right to academic freedom. Hence intrinsic to the right is the practice of competitive appointment. That is to say, both institutional purpose and individual right are embedded in the concept and practice of academic freedom.

While academic freedom is certainly a right, the status of academic tenure is less clear. Academic tenure—permanent appointment, or appointment without limit of time—is defended as an essential protection of academic freedom and the guarantee of independence of judgment. In the latter respect, the case for tenure is similar to the use of life appointment to sustain an independent judiciary, a practice for which Alexander Hamilton argued. Still many regard academic tenure as a privilege—important and beneficial, but still something less exalted than a right. But MacIver refers to the scholar's "right to a status adequate to his responsibility and consonant with the high service that he renders to society and to civilization."^[18] Tenured appointment is also a recognition of competitive excellence and a prize for which competition is as intense as it can be.

[16] Parsons and Platt, American University , p. 154.

[17] MacIver, Academic Freedom p. 10.

[18] Academic Freedom , p. 238.

Yet another view is offered by Parsons and Platt, that "the tenure system is based on commitment, competence, and performance."^[19] Their reference to performance may carry something more than a hint of qualification. As is the case with academic appointment and freedom, tenure should be obtained only on application of the criterion of competitive merit. But unlike the right to academic freedom, academic tenure must be sustained; it confers a special obligation to perform as a trusted professional. Confirmation of the promise of accomplishment, not equality of opportunity, is crucial. From this angle, tenure appears more a privilege than a right. For it has always been understood that tenure could be revoked for adequate cause, whereas the right to academic freedom may be infringed but not revoked. No doubt, the notion of adequate cause has received a moral interpretation; in the American university, intellectual deficiency in and of itself has not been considered actionable. Still, no status that smacks of aristocratic privilege can be sustained without performance of the function that it is designed to secure. Academic tenure is not a form of secure employment of the kind that obtains in a civil service. Both the expectations and obligations attending tenured appointment are greater than those accompanying bureaucratic employment.

In any event, the practice of academic tenure, whether viewed as a right or a privilege, has yet to be improved on as the best way to institutionalize professional autonomy and to evoke dedication to academic ideals. This is the case even though any freedom may be misused, or any privilege abused. Academic freedom is betrayed when academic appointments are made on other than academic grounds. Academic tenure is abused when it is seized for the sake of personal security at the expense of individual rights and university purpose. Some misuse of both freedom and tenure is to be expected and is tolerable. But massive misappointment is unacceptable, fatal for a fiduciary profession.

The Procedures of Academic Appointment

Much of what I have said about the principles of competitive collaboration, university autonomy, and neutrality; about academic freedom and tenure; and about the imperative of competitive appointment is universally applicable to Western universities. I turn now to consideration of American appointive procedures and their rationale. Here we find a division of authority between faculty and administration, the aim of which is reliably to discover, appoint, promote, and tenure the objectivity best-qualified persons. Appointive procedures have their justification as the most effective ways in which to achieve this purpose. Appointment is at the very heart of the academic constitution.

The late Arthur W. Macmahon of Columbia University, a distinguished professor of American politics and administration, offered a classic formula-

[19] Parsons and Platt, American University , p. 377.

tion and justification of appointive procedures in a statement prepared for his university. In appointments to tenured positions, the Columbia procedures provide for review of departmental nominations by ad hoc committees. According to Macmahon, "The membership and the procedures followed by the ad hoc committee are of crucial importance to the University. The President of the University or a senior officer of administration should be a member of every ad hoc committee." Macmahon then affirmed that: "It should be the concern of the ad hoc committee to ascertain whether the department has made an adequate canvass of persons who should be considered for the post for which the nomination is made, and whether the individual recommended may reasonably be said to be the best person obtainable for the proposed work at the proposed level of appointment in the light of all relevant considerations."^[20]

In addition to the classic prescriptions of Macmahon, documents, faculty handbooks, and committee reports from a number of universities serve to confirm the reality of the American academic constitution.^[21] All, in one terminology or another, proclaim the supremacy of the criterion of competitive merit in both tenured and untenured appointments. For example, according to the rules of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Each appointment or reappointment to the staff should be based unequivocally on the reasonable belief that the appointee is the best candidate under the terms of the appointment." Of special interest is Harvard's precaution against the policy of "nepotistic preferentialism," that is, the appointment of persons already members of a faculty to tenured positions on the ground that they meet local academic standards. Harvard says that: "It is vital that the department's case not only document the excellences of the nominee but also state explicitly why this candidate was recommended over other names closely considered. Although always necessary, this comparative aspect of a department's case assumes particular importance when the recommendation is for a promotion from within."

So too is the University of Chicago on its guard against localism. With reference to an assistant professor who is being considered for reappointment or promotion, Chicago prescribes that, "At this point, he should be considered as if it were a new appointment." And Stanford University also seeks formally to protect equality of opportunity against nepotistic pressures: "If the recommended candidate is not the first choice, explain why

[20] Arthur W. Macmahon, The Educational Future of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University, 1957), p. 38. Charles Frankel assisted Macmahon in the preparation of this document. For a more recent and equally authoritative analysis and justification of appointive practices, see Richard A. Lester, Antibias Regulation of Universities: Faculty Problems and Their Solutions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).

[21] Among others, I have examined the regulations of the following: University of California, Berkeley (1969), Harvard University (1971), the University of Chicago (1972), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972), Princeton University (1972), Stanford University (1972 and 1975), and Yale University (1972).

higher choices are not being put forward. If the candidate is already a member of the Stanford faculty, explain why he is recommended over other individuals in his field."^[22]

These are the essentials of the process of academic appointment as set forth in the constitution of the American university. Notice that the process is designed to take advantage of departmental expertise. The convention that affords departments the right to take the initiative in recommending candidates for appointment is founded on their special competence in the academic disciplines. The presumption is that the department is better able than any other body to identify the best prospect among the candidates for appointment. Departmental expertise and initiative entail departmental obligation to perform faithfully and scrupulously this crucial function in the appointive process. Failure to discharge this responsibility and consequent deterioration of a department warrant its suspension, a measure for which American university officers of administration have the authority.

Departmental organization and the corresponding departmental prerogative to nominate for appointment—along with the creation of the graduate school—are the distinctively American innovations in the Western university. But the departmental right to propose does not imply the right to dispose; departmental autonomy is not absolute although much respected. The final authority to appoint is rightfully, and should be effectively, vested in administrative officers, for they have a right to veto departmental recommendations. Theirs is the responsibility for the integrity of the appointive process.

Unconstitutionalized Incentives

It is appropriate, indeed imperative, to reaffirm constantly the obligations assumed by university faculty, obligations that I summarize by reference to academic constitutional morality, the crux of which is devotion to the academic constitution. As Parsons and Platt remark, "The tenured member is expected to fulfill high standards of fiduciary responsibility and is trusted to do so."^[23] But danger of corruption on the part of both faculty and administration is ever present. Departments and whole universities do deteriorate. The academic profession itself may fall into the grip of nepotistic preferentialism. Evidently devotion and trust are not enough; they cannot stand against unconstitutionalized incentives. Here, economic analysis helps to explain the dynamics of academic decline.

Economists regard human action as governed by individual incentives. Some incentives depend importantly on their institutional context. In

[22] This paragraph and the preceding one draw upon my "Tenure in the American University."

[23] Parsons and Platt, American University , p. 131. Note also their point that "Tenure-collegiality is essential to the fiduciary character of the academic role. Tenure is a symbol of membership in the type of collegial collectivity organized about the implementation of fiduciary responsibilities" (p. 367).

certain situations, a classic example of which is the medieval commons, action on individual incentives produces externalities that are to the detriment of all. In the case of the commons these incentives lead to overworking and overgrazing the land, the tragedy of the commons. For the economist, the solution to the problem of harmful externalities is to internalize them, that is, bring home to individuals the costs of their activity. Internalization is the point of private property; it forces people to conserve and to husband, rather than competitively to squander, their resources.

Now apply this type of analysis to the situation of the American academic profession. In particular, consider the incentives that operate in an unconstitutionalized system of higher education. And remember that for imperfectly rational creatures a constitution is essentially a method of binding oneself against behavior that one will later regret. No rhetoric of constitutional morality can prevent these incentives from generating immensely harmful externalities in the form of damage to the university as an intellectual community, to its students, and to society. Unless they can be induced to internalize these externalities, faculty will abandon academic freedom and so release one another from exposure to the criterion of competitive appointment. And they will grant themselves jobs for life at the expense of the coming generation of scholars and scientists. This is the tragedy of the academic commons. For if each member feels that even if he remains faithful to the constitutional ethos, others will not, and therefore he best act to his own advantage, in effect all agree to dilute academic standards and the appointive process, whatever the external costs. Unconstrained by constitutional structure and undeterred by constitutional morality, incentives that work to destroy professional integrity and discipline take hold of people.

The dynamics of academic decline produce a kind of collusion that need not necessarily be open, as in the organized drive to unionize a university. Rather destructive agreement, arising from the incentives at work in an unconstitutionalized university, may well take the form of an implicit mutual understanding to live and let live, to exploit the university by turning it into a kind of club, permanent membership in which is assured to those on the waiting list—the "tenure track," as it is known in the United States—so long as they meet the local standards of appointment. In consequence, the resources of the academic system, namely, tenured posts, are gobbled up without stint.

Of course, to speak of a tenure track is to display a thoroughly illegitimate attitude toward the appointive process as prescribed by the academic constitution. But this attitude prevails, as a mere glance at American university advertisements illustrates. Indeed the concept of a tenure track institutionalizes the unconstitutional policy of nepotistic preferentialism.

In my observation, the American bureaucratic policy of affirmative action has been applied to relax the criterion of competitive merit for women and minorities; this practice legitimizes and consolidates unfortunate atti-

tudes and incentives. After all, people ask themselves why they should expose themselves to the criterion of merit when others, their competitors, are evading it. Of course, this means that the policy of affirmative action finally tends to militate against those whom it is supposed to favor. It is less easy than many imagine to circumvent the dictates of equal opportunity and individualized justice.

This application of economic thinking to the university reveals why departments and faculties cannot be expected to adhere to the academic constitution and to fulfill their obligations on a voluntary basis. It is not only a matter of corruption. It is, more realistically, a matter of the personal and well-nigh universal incentives that naturally develop in situations lacking appropriate constraints. In the university, as in the polity and the economy, the problem is to devise constraints that bring individual rationality in line with collective rationality. For the university, the academic constitution provides the solution to this problem. To constitutionalize individual incentives is the appropriate response to academic decline. In the university both moral and intellectual integrity depend on their effective presence. Trust itself requires institutionalization.

Administrative Constitutional Responsibilities

Professional obligations to the university as an intellectual institution are too weak and too diffuse, and too apt to be overridden, to provide effective incentives without authoritative support and sanction. Earlier we noticed that the American academic constitution divides authority over appointments between faculty and administrators. Final appointive authority is allocated to the officers of administration. But administrators' responsibility goes beyond that for individual appointments. Their paramount responsibility is for both the procedural and substantive integrity of the appointive process itself. For the discharge of this responsibility, administrative authority is wholly sufficient according to the American academic constitution. Legally speaking, American university presidents are Hobbesian sovereigns, to whom their faculties stand in an advisory relation. Unfortunately, the majority of American university administrators probably do not so interpret their authority and responsibility. They tend to become politicized in the sense that they are overly responsive to faculty attitudes and pressure; academic leadership tends to dissolve into negotiation; no one speaks for the academic constitution, and few have the moral authority that would be required to impose constitutionality on their faculties. But this is simply to admit that the great majority of American institutions of higher education are either unconstitutionalized or partially so. They neither appoint competitively nor adhere to high absolute standards for appointment. They are neither governments of law nor governments of men who take their responsibilities seriously.

In this light we can better understand why a show of administrative authority may be attacked by faculty as despotic tyranny. Many American

faculty members ask for greater departmental autonomy and call for a greater share in so-called governance of their universities. All this reflects a persistent will to invade the constitutional authority and responsibility of the administrators.

In the United States the notion of university governance is bruited about with a view to increasing faculty participation in it. But in reality no such governance exists, for universities do not take corporate decisions, or do so only very rarely. If all the members of a university perform their constitutional duty, there is nothing much else left to do, and what remains to be done is best left to executive initiative. If the administrative officers are negligent or stupid, then the proper line of action is to get rid of them, not to usurp their authority and compromise their responsibility. The notion of governance as applied to universities is essentially an ideological weapon used by faculty against administrators to deform the academic constitution. I know of no American faculty that has called upon its administration to discharge its responsibility for the integrity of the appointive process or that has united against administrative officers for having failed to do so.

In these times faculty emphasis upon collegiality has also become ideologically colored. To be sure, the university is a stratified collegial association. However, the collegial aspect of its nature does not transform the university into a participatory democracy. Nor does collegiality absolve faculty and administrators of their differentiated and complementary duties. Collegiality has become a kind of code word for academic egalitarianism. And academic egalitarianism is not merely another expressivist phenomenon; it too functions to delegitimize responsible academic leadership.^[24]

Academic Tenure in the United States

According to a report of the National Science Foundation on tenure practices in science and engineering departments in all American universities and four-year colleges with tenure systems, the proportion of total faculty tenured in the academic year 1978-79 was 67 percent.^[25] The physical

[24] For an egalitarian conception of the theory of the university, see Amy Gutmann, "Is Freedom Academic?: The Relative Autonomy of Universities in a Liberal Democracy," in Liberal Democracy: Nomos XXV , ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1983). Compare the following: George Armstrong Kelly, The Trammeled University (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1974); Howard O. Hunter, "Universities and the Needs of Local and Regional Communities," Minerva 18 (Winter 1980): 624-43; and Derek Bok, Social Responsibilities of the Modern University (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

[25] The statistics on tenure in this section are from three sources: National Science Foundation, "Tenure Practices in Universities and 4-Year Colleges Affect Faculty Turnover," in Science Resource Studies: Highlights , NSF 81–300 (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1981); Frank J. Atelsek and Irene L. Gomberg, Tenure Practices at Four-Year Colleges and Universities , Higher Education Panel Report, no. 48 (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1980); and Academe: Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 66 (September 1980).

sciences had the highest proportion tenured (76 percent), the social sciences the lowest (63 percent). In the physical sciences an additional 20 percent were in tenure-track positions, that is, appointments that make one eligible for consideration for tenure according to mainly local academic standards. In the social sciences, 30 percent of the faculty held tenure-track positions. Further, in American private universities in the physical sciences 74 percent were tenured, and in the social sciences, 59 percent. The corresponding figures for public universities are 78 and 68 percent. Of science and engineering faculty who did not have tenure at the beginning of the 1978–79 academic year, over 75 percent were in the tenure track. Finally the American Council on Education reports that 69 percent of the humanities faculty in all institutions were tenured, with another 24 percent in tenure-track positions.

Consider now the tenure decisions in the academic year 1978–79. Of persons considered for tenure in the physical sciences in private universities 97 percent were approved, and the rest were eligible for reconsideration; in the social sciences, 76 percent were granted tenure. The corresponding figures for public universities were 74 and 56 percent.

For all institutions, fewer than 1 percent of all faculty were involuntarily released without formal consideration for tenure, including those who resigned because of anticipated failure to receive tenure. Evidently once appointed a person was practically certain to be reappointed and considered for tenure, and the vast majority would be so considered on a noncompetitive basis. Failure to get tenure and involuntary separation together contributed about 2 percent of turnover of full-time faculty in American institutions of higher education.

The National Science Foundation discovered that American academic administrators expected the tenure-approval rate to rise in the future, especially in the social sciences. "The social sciences tend to have greater proportions of young doctorate faculty than do the physical sciences and engineering fields. Thus, it is likely that more of the senior faculty in the latter fields would have already served their probationary period and been granted tenure."^[26] The concept of probationary period, as is tenure track, is offensive to the American academic constitution.

Look now at tenure data compiled by the American Association of University Professors. Among a selection of public universities, the following percentages of their faculty are tenured: California Institute of Technology, 78.6; University of California at Berkeley, 80.2; University of Colorado at Boulder, 81.0; Indiana State University, 77.2; University of Kansas, 78.3; University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 76.7; Michigan State University, 77.1; University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, 71.8; Kent State University of Ohio, 80.1; Ohio University, 79.4; and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 79.3. According to my computation, the average

[26] Atelsek and Gomberg, Tenure Practices , p. 4.

percentage tenured of fifteen more or less representative state institutions is 79.3.

Compare the above proportions with the percentages of faculty tenured in American private universities: Stanford University, 75.1; Yale University, 52.5; University of Chicago, 67.0; Johns Hopkins University, 51.8; Harvard University, 55.1; Princeton University, 61.0; Columbia University, 56.1; Cornell University, 72.3; and Brown University, 79.0.

Finally notice what may well be the most heavily overtenured academic institutions in the United States, the state colleges of Pennsylvania. The top five of these colleges, of which there are about a dozen, average out at 91.6 percent tenured, with one at 95.1 percent.

In the early seventies the American Association of University Professors established a commission to investigate and to recommend on tenured appointment in American higher education. The commission reports that, "Most institutions—94 percent—place no limit on the proportion of their faculty who may be tenured." The commission then asserts: "In the commission's nearly unanimous judgment, it will probably be dangerous for most institutions if tenured faculty constitute more than one half to two thirds of the total full-time faculty during the decade ahead. "^[27] The American academic profession ignored this responsible recommendation. Indeed, essentially unconstitutionalized universities were bound to ignore it, given the nature of the incentives to which they were vulnerable.

These statistics on American tenure policy depict serious institutional and professional default. Clearly the rate of tenuring, especially in the physical sciences, is too high. Still, with a few exceptions, the great constitutionalized universities have behaved in a responsible manner. They have kept proportions of faculty tenured at reasonable levels, and they have appointed competitively. But the vast majority of American institutions of higher education are unconstitutionalized. They recognize no upper limit on the percentage of faculty tenured, and they appoint from their tenure tracks, that is, they give preference to their own people. They do not insist that candidates for permanent appointment stand in national competition and so accept an internal restriction on the application of strictly intellectual criteria.^[28]

Consequences of American Tenure Policy

The flooding of American higher education with people who have not been exposed to the criterion of competitive excellence cannot but have unfortunate consequences. The academic profession was warned in a timely manner about the implications of its tenure policies. In 1977 Chancellor Richard C.

[27] American Association of University Professors, Faculty Tenure (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973), pp. 6 and 50.

[28] A number of chapters in this volume deal with the situation elsewhere. At the 1981 I.C.F.U. symposium on "University Autonomy and Academic Freedom," Professor Thomas Nipperdey of the University of Munich reported on the state of affairs in West German universities today. He remarked that tenure is often granted after three years of appointmentand that there is great pressure to grant it. Apparently in Britain many institutions award tenure on the basis of a three-year probationary period, and David Martin's statistics (chapter 13) show a clear decline in the quality of academic appointments, especially in the polytechnics. In contrast, at the 1981 I.C.F.U. symposium Professor John Passmore said that the Australian National University limits tenured posts to 50 percent and requires all candidates for these posts to stand in national competition.

Atkinson of the University of California at San Diego, then acting director of the National Science Foundation, pointed to: "A substantial increase in the proportion of tenured faculty members: by 1974 tenured professors accounted for an overall average of 70 percent in the sciences and engineering, with physics professors at 78 percent and professors in chemical engineering at a high of 81 percent."^[29] On another occasion, Dr. Atkinson said that "these trends threaten to lock out younger Ph.D.'s from tenured faculty positions. In some disciplines, it is not an exaggeration to fear that we may lose an entire generation of bright, young minds."^[30] Not many spoke out as did Atkinson, and the blockage of appointees that he decried has come to pass. Today concern is often expressed about the future capacity of American scientists to compete for Nobel prizes.

As for the humanities in American universities, a salvage program of sorts is now under way. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has pledged some $24 million for investment in a graduate fellowship program for humanities students.^[31] The objective of the Mellon program is to save for the humanities exceptionally able young persons who would otherwise turn, or be turned, away from an academic career.

The consequences of American tenure policy involve not only damage to the university insofar as its capacity to perform as an intellectual institution is impaired. Fundamental rights are infringed also. Aspirants to an academic career have a right to be considered on their academic qualifications alone, without facing exclusionary criteria. Students have a right to the best education they can get and use. Failure to provide this constitutes a further denial of equality of opportunity. And society has a right to expect from the academic profession disciplined and trustworthy behavior. All these rights have been overridden. It may also be that the national security of the United States is endangered insofar as that depends on the pace of technological advance.

Further Diagnostic Reflections

With the exception of the leading institutions, both the way in which and the extent to which tenure is granted in American universities are indefensi-

[29] Richard C. Atkinson, "The Threat to Scientific Research," The Chronicle of Higher Education (28 March 1977).

[30] Atkinson, "University Research and Graduate Education" (Remarks to the Annual Meeting of the Western Association of Graduate Schools, Albuquerque, N.M., 7 March 1977).

[31] Fred M. Hechinger, "What Must Be Done to Save The Humanities?" New York Times (26 January 1982).

ble. The American academic profession is disintegrating into a collection of defensive guilds, each with its own "track" to tenured security. It is no wonder that American academics indulge in grade equalization. If they refuse to grade themselves, how can they be expected to grade their students? Sheer consistency of attitude dictates that no one should be rigorously appraised.

How and why did this essentially pathological condition come about? The short answer, of course, lies in the failure fully to constitutionalize the universities. After all, the point of the academic constitution is to enforce competition and so constrain people against opportunistic and self-indulgent action. In this respect the university is like any other human institution in that it is composed of rules and procedures to ensure compliance with those rules and is backed by an ethos whose strength determines the health of the institution. But why the failure to constitutionalize? This question provokes further reflection.

In the liberal philosophy of life, equality is wedded to freedom in that its very meaning derives from freedom. Hence the basic liberal right is the equal right to freedom, to equality of opportunity. Any institution like the Western university, the success of whose mission depends on enforcement of equality of opportunity and respect for individual merit, will be profoundly implicated in the eclipse of the liberal philosophy of life. When equality becomes detached from and opposed to freedom, as it has in our time, cultural and institutional transformations will inevitably follow.

From a cultural standpoint the expressivist attitude toward life, to which I called attention earlier, tends to emphasize unity at the expense of individuality. And unity is a feeling that is inherently localistic and so easily translates into frozen pluralism as each institution withdraws into itself. Then we get both academic guildism and reactive assertions of group rights, a kind of vicious dialectic. Moreover, the expressivist temper tends to detach equality from freedom and so gives rise to egalitarianism. That is to say, expressivism weakens respect for both individual rights and individual accomplishment; striving for excellence is castigated as a manifestation of elitism. And, as we have seen, expressivism works to legitimate attitudes and incentives that are fatal to academic constitutional morality. In a cultural perspective, therefore, the rise of romantic expressivism—tantamount to the demise of the liberal philosophy of life—helps to explain our institutional decline.

In an economic perspective also, the Western university displays responsiveness to deep trends in Western civilizations. For some time now people have been turning away from economic freedom and reliance on the market to politics to advance their interests. This politicization of life is approved by many political philosophers of liberal egalitarian or Marxist persuasion.^[32] In the Western university politicization takes a number of forms.

[32] The following are exemplary statements of these trends of thought: Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); C. B. MacPherson, TheLife and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Knowledge & Politics (New York: Free Press, 1975). I appraise these trends in "Justice, Freedom, and Property," in Property: Nomos XXII , ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1980), pp. 289–324.

First is the introduction of the Gruppenprinzip into the universities of West Germany and its adoption elsewhere on the continent.^[33] Second is the application of political ideology to academic appointments, the continued practice of which would put an end to the Western university. And third, there is the distinctively American form of politicization in which faculty exert pressure on one another and on administrative officers for mutual protection. Moreover, American academics seem increasingly willing to forsake their obligation to truth in order to proselytize their students and colleagues. For example, economic theorems appear to be no longer valid or mistaken, but rather radical or traditional. The ideal of intellectual objectivity is driven out by demands for ideological balance. All these trends reflect repugnance for an open society. It seems that power is what really counts in both the economy and the academy.

From a purely political viewpoint, the American university has been taken over by a Madisonian faction that is using its power to subvert the academic institution, to defy important rights, and to harm the public good. This experience should remind us that a fundamental purpose of constitutionalism is precisely to prevent domination by a faction, especially a majority faction. In the unconstitutionalized universities of the United States effective control has passed to the faculty, which is only to say that American academic administrators have not enforced the rules.

Reflection on the pathology of the Western university from these complementary perspectives—cultural, philosophical, economic, and political—reinforces one's appreciation of just how serious our condition is. We are in a cultural and institutional crisis, not just a passing state of disorientation. Academic integrity in hiring, grading, and teaching may be vanishing in the wake of opportunistic behavior the causes of which are both deep and manifold. And administrative authority is dormant or deficient. In such circumstances institutional degeneration is inevitable. We live with the vicissitudes of our own ambivalence.

Constitutionalization

Restoration of academic health depends, first of all, on revival of morale, on arousal of self-respect, and creation of a climate of opinion intolerant of mutual indulgence. But this in turn depends on putting a stop to diffidence and opportunism. People require assurance that their fellows will stick to the rules of the game, otherwise mutual uncertainty generates preemptive and protective action. Long ago Thomas Hobbes explained the dynamics of rulelessness.^[34] Respect for academic freedom, for equal academic oppor-

[33] These developments are analyzed and appraised in German Universities Commission, Report on German Universities .

[34] For a more recent analysis of the characterological and motivational consequences ofstatelessness, see Richard A. Posner, The Economics of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), part II. For the harm that unconstrained, opportunistic action does to both economic and intellectual progress, see Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981).

tunity, cannot survive in a Hobbesian "state of nature." The university is not immune to the political dynamics on the understanding and control of which we have built our free societies. To think otherwise is both fatuous and arrogant.

I suggest, therefore, that constitutionalization of the Western university should now become the prime objective of the academic profession. This is the prescription to which my analysis of our condition clearly points. As a secondary and contributing objective, rectification of damage already done to the university, and to society at large, is very much in order. In particular, we need to deal with deformations of the appointive process and the consequent abuse of academic tenure.

Renewable Contracts

One prescription that deserves serious consideration is to replace academic tenure with renewable contracts of, say, seven or ten years.^[35] Review of performance at specified intervals would, of course, make it possible to remove unproductive people, provided a will to do so exists, and at the present time this is problematical. There would be pressure to keep faculty members on so long as their work was satisfactory, all things considered. But conformity to "satisfactory" as a standard perpetuates nepotism and guildism. Moreover, to base the academic profession on bureaucratic contracts of employment would seriously depreciate its status. A hiatus between status and function would thereby be created. And could the profession, so depreciated and denigrated, continue to attract able men and women, who in any case will seek independence, however it is to be had? Professional autonomy is the only real alternative to financial independence, and an academic career offers the latter only to a few. Finally, abolition of academic tenure would be tantamount to admission that universities cannot be trusted to discharge their responsibility for intellectual objectivity and progress. The case for academic autonomy in all its forms would be clouded. The trial of the Western university would conclude with a confession of guilt.

In my opinion, these considerations warrant rejection of the prescription of renewable contracts. Those who do not agree may wish to imagine the incentives that periodic mutual appraisal would arouse. Intellectual and moral independence could be even harder to come by, as people sought refuge in cliques. And Hobbesian diffidence would strike at universities as intellectual communities.

[35] Use of ten-year renewable contracts has been suggested by Robert Orr, Dean of the Graduate School of the London School of Economics. See his letter and my reply in I.C.F.U. Newsletter 6 (August 1979).

Early Retirement with Optional Retention

A proposal for early retirement combined with optional retention of productive persons is put forward by Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer. His plan is designed to cope with conditions in the British universities. But presumably it could have a wider utility. According to Sir Peter: "If tenure is to continue at all, it needs to be combined with a substantially lower retiring age. A university could continue to employ, on either a whole-time or a part-time basis, those who had reached retiring age but were still active and vigorous: but it would no longer have to continue to employ those who were not."^[36] This policy might very well help universities through the current difficult period of few available tenured positions. It would certainly demand administrative integrity of a high order. But like the Mellon Foundation's plan to strengthen the humanities, Swinnterton-Dyer's prescription would not cure the American disease of academic protectionism. Only open competition for a limited number of tenured appointments can do that.

Indefinite Tenure

Professor Edward Shils of the University of Chicago suggests that the practice of academic tenure should be revised. He would convert "permanent" into "indefinite" tenure. According to Shils, permanent tenure does indeed protect academic freedom, but it "also protects the individual against the sanction of discontinuance of his appointment for insufficient conscientiousness in teaching, indolence, dishonesty and incompetence in research and severe deficiency or subversion of the performance of the obligations of academic citizenship." Therefore, he recommends that the practice be revised, but not completely discarded. Instead of permanent appointment universities would confer presumptive permanence of tenure, that is, continuing appointment would be conditional on meeting a reasonable standard of achievement. This conditionality is the difference between permanent and indefinite tenure. Shils insists, of course, that "Reviews of presumptive permanent, or qualified permanent, tenure would be explicitly restricted to considerations of the academic's achievements in the fulfilment of the obligations in teaching, research and academic citizenship."^[37]

No doubt Shils's concept of indefinite tenure could be used to dispense with persons who do not live up to expectations. Still the proviso must be: given that both administrations and faculties have the will to do so. This may well be the case in our leading universities, but they are the least likely to have to deal with defaulters. Determination to enforce standards of performance is unlikely to be present in institutions where both faculty and administration are corrupt. Indeed it might be easier to get tenure-tracked universities to constitutionalize than to deal with specific cases of academic

[36] Swinnterton-Dyer, "Prospects for Higher Education," p. 10.

[37] Shils, "Academic Freedom and Academic Obligations," pp. 29, 49–50.

failure. Another question is whether revokable tenure would encourage or discourage more rigorous appraisal of candidates. People might be tempted by the thought that, after all, the decision to grant tenure is not final.

But the real inadequacy of indefinite tenure is that it alleviates only some symptoms of our sickness. The American academic system is infected with both irrelevant criteria of appointment and excessive tenuring. Restoration of health depends, above all, on limiting tenured appointments and opening them all to competition. There is no alternative to constitutionalization.

The Western University on Trial

Universities in the Western world are on trial today mainly because they have failed to protect professional merit against political ambition or personal security. In part, the explanation of this failure is cultural. Much about the modern temperament is illiberal. And the attractions of power and political ideology also weaken respect for intellectual objectivity and individual rights.^[38] From defective conceptions of human individuality and social justice a destructive will to politicize all of life arises.^[39] But to blur the line between political and academic activity is fatal to the case for university autonomy. The very idea of the university depends on maintenance of this distinction.

The rest of the explanation as to what went wrong is structural and situational. Unconstitutionalized universities are prone to invasion by unprofessional criteria; they tend to turn into clubs or guilds with waiting lists;^[40] and they find it difficult to resist importunate demands for permanent membership. In the absence of constitutional constraint, attitudes and incentives are generated that debilitate both intellectual integrity and professional morality.

The fate of academic freedom epitomizes our condition. Academic freedom is a complex of rights that derive from both the mission of the uni-

[38] See Guenter Lewy, "Academic Ethics and the Radical Left," Policy Review 19 (Winter 1982): 29–42.

[39] The consequences of politicizing the economy are explored by Lester C. Thurow, The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for Economic Change (New York: Basic Books, 1980); Dan Usher, The Political Prerequisite to Democracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), and Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

[40] The American concept of the tenure track implies that at the end of a probationary period a person must be either promoted or let go. To avoid this decision, some institutions have introduced the status of tenurable, which is awarded to persons deemed good enough to keep, who are then appointed until an opening appears in the tenured ranks. This protective innovation has been denounced by the American Association of University Professors as follows: "Assuming they have fully earned an entitlement to tenure, there can be no justification for continuing them in a less favorable and more vulnerable status than their tenured colleagues" (quoted by Richard P. Chait and Andrew T. Ford, "Beyond Traditional Tenure: Extended Probationary Periods and Suspension of 'Up-or-Out' Rule," Change 14 {July–August 1982}: 53). Recent changes in the regulations of the University of Pittsburgh permit removal of a person from the tenure track either temporarily or permanently.

versity and the liberal philosophy of life. Academic freedom as applied to the university implies a claim to institutional autonomy. In its departmental guise academic freedom confers initiative in appointments, the aim of which is to foster selection on the basis of professional merit. For individuals academic freedom means not only freedom to think, teach, and write. It is the academic application of a fundamental principle of justice, namely, equality of opportunity, the right to advance through intellectual merit without let or hindrance by inappropriate tests. This is the fundamental right that the Western university has failed scrupulously to protect. Here academic administrators are deeply implicated for they have constitutional responsibility for the integrity of the appointive process.

In the Western university, because it is an intellectual and not a political or a moral institution, a single objective reigns, namely, intellectual progress. In consequence, more so than in any other human institution, individual rights to liberty and justice should mesh smoothly with social welfare and progress. No conflict arises between individual excellence and social utility. On the contrary, academic injustice damages not only individuals but also society. Both liberal and academic justice dictate resurrection of the individual's right to academic freedom. Only then will the trial of the Western university be over and its future secure.