Individual Academic Freedom and the Current Forces of Economics and Technology
30 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2023
Date Written: November 21, 2023
Abstract
The various cultural constraints on higher education institutions always matter. But sometimes, such constraints are especially severe. Currently, there are increasingly severe broadly economic, specifically market-based, and technological constraints on universities, and on many traditional law schools in particular. Our concern herein is for such constraints in the many cases in which a faculty member’s speech on some matter of public interest arguably impairs a legitimate interest of the employer-university or law school. The weight of the educational institution’s interests in such academic speech cases is, for several reasons, increasing. Any balancing of the relevant individual professorial interests and the educational institutional interests in such cases should take these increasing institutional constraints into proper account.
Keywords: academic freedom, free speech, Garcetti, Pickering, adjuncts, online education
JEL Classification: K10, K20, K30
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation