Academic Freedom and Academic Libraries 

In preparing for this article, I realized that academic freedom was a term I had heard of but didn’t know what it actually meant.  When I investigated, I saw some sources say that it is an old idea, perhaps as old as Socrates’ defense (Hofstadter, 1955), or it originated with clashes between royal charters and Catholic Church oversight at European universities in the 1100s and 1200s (Dreyfuss & Ryan, 2016).   

In modern times, the idea of academic freedom is often attributed to the case of Edward A. Ross, whose writings which criticized the railroad industry and promoted anti-Asian racism eventually led to his firing from Stanford University (De Witte, 2023; E. J. Levine, 2023).  His dismissal was seen by several colleagues as unjust, so they resolved to resign in solidarity.

These events inspired formation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), who described the principles of academic freedom in their 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure.  This was further developed via AAUP’s 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

Under AAUP’s framework, academic freedom consists of three core ideas:

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject
3. College and university teachers are citizens, …when they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline (1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments, 1940).

Library professional organizations such as American Library Association (ALA) and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have adopted principles of academic freedom as well.  ALA endorsed the AAUP’s Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1946 (Kandiuk & Sonne De Torrens, 2015).  In 2015, ACRL approved a Statement on Academic Freedom, then reaffirmed it in 2022.  But despite these displays of support, unfortunately the history of academic freedom in libraries demonstrates that librarians have often not been able to express their academic freedom in the same way that faculty represented by AAUP have been able to.

In fact, librarians were only allowed to join AAUP beginning in 1956 (Boden, 2006).  AAUP also treats academic freedom as part and parcel of the institution of tenure (De Witte, 2023), to which many librarians do not have access.  This is especially significant since librarians who identified as faculty or had faculty-like status reported feeling protected in their work at higher rates than those without faculty or faculty-like status (Leebaw & Logsdon, 2020).

Therefore, it is not surprising that librarians who fight for the safeguards of academic freedom can be deliberately excluded from it.  For instance, University of California, which has an academic freedom policy on its books, made a point of declaring that the policy’s protections did not apply to “nonfaculty academic personnel, including librarians” when librarians asked for this to be included in their union contract (C. Levine, 2018).

Discussions of academic freedom in libraries are often conflated with those surrounding intellectual freedom.  However, intellectual freedom is seen to have “developed out of the perspective of users’ rights to access library materials” (Asato, 2014); whereas, in the library context, academic freedom articulates more support for teaching and collection development aspects of faculty-librarians themselves.  In addition, intellectual freedom applies to all libraries, not just those at schools or colleges.

Accordingly, ALA acknowledges that academic freedom of librarians derives from their “roles as teachers, researchers, and trustees of knowledge” (ACRL Joint Committee on College Library Problems, 2018).  Several cases led towards this understanding, many of which are described in Asato’s Librarians’ Free Speech: The Challenge of Librarians’ Own Intellectual Freedom to the American Library Association, 1946-2007 (2014).

In practice, academic freedom is often an illusion.  Research has shown that a large number of people – regardless of faculty status – perceived they were being “silenced” in that “speaking up” could hurt their career (Leebaw & Logsdon, 2020).  There have also been librarians subjected to Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuits, such as Beall’s List and the case of Dale Askey, whose university was targeted with a lawsuit alleging harm from comments he made online about certain publishers (Kandiuk & Sonne De Torrens, 2015).

Social media has also provided new challenges to academic freedom, as it has facilitated targeted harassment campaigns, which can bring attention from college leadership, who often prefer to stifle or deny academic freedom of librarians to protect the institution (CRD Connect & Communicate, 2020; Kandiuk & Sonne De Torrens, 2015).

Academic freedom remains often viewed as a privilege, not a right:  one which librarians frequently lack, and in which faculty status librarians are seen to have more “privilege” in terms of having or being able to practice academic freedom.

Going forward, the future of academic freedom is uncertain.  Academic freedom is being challenged by proposals such as the Compact for Academic Excellence (Brest, 2025) and libraries facing a new wave of book bannings (Baêta et al., 2025).

At the same time, academic freedom is regarded as a major priority for library deans-directors (Oltmann, 2017), so hopefully these leaders in our field will continue to support and fight for protections of academic freedom, so those who work in libraries can have their voices heard in an era where their work is being challenged for the events they host, programs they run, research they conduct, and books and materials they purchase.

References:

1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments. (1940). AAUP. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/policy-statements/1940-statement-principles-academic

Academic Freedom Violated Once More. (1938, January 25). The Lantern, 2.

ACRL Joint Committee on College Library Problems. (2018). ACRL Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians. ACRL Guidelines, Standards, and Frameworks. https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/jointstatementfaculty

Asato, N. (2014). Librarians’ Free Speech: The Challenge of Librarians’ Own Intellectual Freedom to the American Library Association, 1946-2007. Library Trends, 63(1), 75–105.

Baêta, S., Magnusson, T., Markham, M., & Latorre, Y. T. (2025, October 1). The Normalization of Book Banning. PEN America. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/

Boden, D. W. R. (2006). Academic Librarians’ Views of the Chair’s Professional Development Role. Advances in Library Administration and Organization, 24, 117–149.

Brest, P. (2025, October 23). How the Compact Curtails Academic Freedom. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/10/23/how-compact-curtails-academic-freedom-opinion

CRD Connect & Communicate (Director). (2020, March 13). C&CS Presents: “Academic Freedom and Academic Libraries: Do you have it and how do you know?” [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_mqQcxNXBQ

De Witte, M. (2023, May 1). Academic freedom’s origin story. Stanford Report. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/05/origin-story-academic-freedom

Dreyfuss, S., & Ryan, M. (2016). Academic Freedom: The Continuing Challenge. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 16(1), 1–9.

Hofstadter, R. (with Metzger, W. P.). (1955). The development of academic freedom in the United States. Columbia University Press.

Kandiuk, M., & Sonne De Torrens, H. M. (2015). Librarians in a Litigious Age and the Attack on Academic Freedom. In Current Issues in Libraries, Information Science and Related Fields (pp. 3-45). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020150000039009

Keeney, P. O. (1939). The Next Case. Wilson Bulletin for Librarians, 13(10), 663–666.

Leebaw, D., & Logsdon, A. (2020). Power and Status (and Lack Thereof) in Academe: Academic Freedom and Academic Librarians. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2020/power-and-status-and-lack-thereof-in-academe/

Levine, C. (2018, August 30). Are Librarians Entitled to Academic Freedom? Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/are-librarians-entitled-to-academic-freedom/ 

Levine, E. J. (Producer). (2023, April 28). How a Stanford Speech Scandal Led to the Invention of Academic Freedom: The Case of Edward A. Ross [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AesygiQy0Hs

Oltmann, S. M. (2017). Intellectual Freedom in Academic Libraries: Surveying Deans about Its Significance. College & Research Libraries, 78(6), 741–760. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.6.741