[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 318 Introduced in House (IH)]






108th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. CON. RES. 318

    Expressing the sense of the Congress that American colleges and 
  universities should adopt an Academic Bill of Rights to secure the 
   intellectual independence of faculty members and students and to 
            protect the principle of intellectual diversity.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            October 30, 2003

Mr. Kingston (for himself, Mr. Jones of North Carolina, Mr. Wicker, Mr. 
 Istook, Mr. Cox, Mr. Pitts, Mr. Wilson of South Carolina, Mr. Duncan, 
Mr. McKeon, Mr. Herger, Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, Mr. Hayworth, 
  Mr. Lewis of Kentucky, Mr. Weldon of Pennsylvania, Mr. Gingrey, Mr. 
    Bartlett of Maryland, Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Pombo) submitted the 
following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on 
                      Education and the Workforce

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION


 
    Expressing the sense of the Congress that American colleges and 
  universities should adopt an Academic Bill of Rights to secure the 
   intellectual independence of faculty members and students and to 
            protect the principle of intellectual diversity.

Whereas the central purposes of a university are the pursuit of truth, the 
        discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study 
        and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the 
        teaching and general development of students to help them become 
        creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, 
        and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large;
Whereas free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are 
        indispensable to the achievement of the central purposes of a 
        university, the freedoms to teach and to learn depend upon the creation 
        of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as 
        well as in the classrooms and lecture halls, and these purposes reflect 
        the values of pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, 
        openness, and fairness that are the cornerstones of American society;
Whereas academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to 
        an American university;
Whereas from its first formulation in the General Report of the Committee on 
        Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University 
        Professors, the concept of academic freedom has been premised on the 
        ideas that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that 
        there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to 
        challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on 
        wisdom;
Whereas academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of 
        intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought 
        and speech;
Whereas in the words of the general report, it is vital to protect ``as the 
        first condition of progress, [a] complete and unlimited freedom to 
        pursue inquiry and publish its results'';
Whereas free inquiry and its fruits are crucial to the democratic enterprise, 
        and academic freedom is a national value;
Whereas in Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New 
        York, a historic 1967 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a New York 
        State loyalty provision for teachers with these words: ``Our Nation is 
        deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, [a] transcendent 
        value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned'';
Whereas in Sweezy v. New Hampshire in 1957, the Supreme Court observed that the 
        ``essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities 
        [was] almost self-evident'';
Whereas academic freedom consists of protecting the intellectual independence of 
        professors, researchers, and students in the pursuit of knowledge and 
        the expression of ideas from interference by legislators or authorities 
        within the institution itself, meaning that no political, ideological, 
        or religious orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and researchers 
        through the hiring, tenure, or termination process, nor through any 
        other administrative means by the academic institution, nor should the 
        legislature impose any such orthodoxy through its control of the 
        university budget;
Whereas it has long been recognized that intellectual independence means the 
        protection of students and faculty members from the imposition of any 
        orthodoxy of a political, ideological, or religious nature;
Whereas the 1915 Declaration of Principles of the American Association of 
        University Professors admonished faculty members to avoid ``taking 
        unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with 
        the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity 
        fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and 
        before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be 
        entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own'';
Whereas in 1967, the American Association of University Professors' Joint 
        Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students reinforced and amplified 
        this injunction by affirming the inseparability of ``the freedom to 
        teach and freedom to learn''; and
Whereas in the words of the joint statement, ``[s]tudents should be free to take 
        reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study 
        and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion'': Now, therefore, be 
        it
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), 
That, to secure the intellectual independence of faculty members and 
students and to protect the principle of intellectual diversity--
            (1) the Congress encourages all public and private colleges 
        and universities in the United States to adopt an Academic Bill 
        of Rights and to observe the following principles and 
        procedures--
                    (A) all faculty members will be hired, fired, 
                promoted, and granted tenure on the basis of their 
                competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of 
                their expertise and, in the humanities, the social 
                sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a 
                plurality of methodologies and perspectives;
                    (B) no faculty member will be hired, fired, or 
                denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her 
                political, ideological, or religious beliefs;
                    (C) no faculty member will be excluded from tenure, 
                search, and hiring committees on the basis of his or 
                her political, ideological, or religious beliefs;
                    (D) students will be graded solely on the basis of 
                their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the 
                subjects and disciplines they study, not on the basis 
                of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs;
                    (E) curricula and reading lists in the humanities 
                and social sciences will respect the uncertainty and 
                unsettled character of all human knowledge in these 
                areas and provide students with dissenting sources and 
                viewpoints;
                    (F) while teachers are and should be free to pursue 
                their own findings and perspectives in presenting their 
                views, they should consider and make their students 
                aware of other viewpoints;
                    (G) academic disciplines should welcome a diversity 
                of approaches to unsettled questions;
                    (H) exposing students to the spectrum of 
                significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects 
                examined in their courses is a major responsibility of 
                faculty members;
                    (I) faculty members will not use their courses or 
                their positions for the purpose of political, 
                ideological, religious, or antireligious 
                indoctrination;
                    (J) selection of speakers, allocation of funds for 
                speakers' programs, and other student activities will 
                observe the principles of academic freedom and promote 
                intellectual pluralism;
                    (K) because an environment conducive to the civil 
                exchange of ideas is an essential component of a free 
                university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, 
                the destruction of campus literature, and other efforts 
                to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated;
                    (L) academic institutions and professional 
                societies should maintain a posture of organizational 
                neutrality with respect to the substantive 
                disagreements that divide researchers on questions 
                within, or outside, their fields of inquiry, 
                recognizing that--
                            (i) knowledge advances when individual 
                        scholars are left free to reach their own 
                        conclusions about which methods, facts, and 
                        theories have been validated by research; and
                            (ii) academic institutions and professional 
                        societies formed to advance knowledge within an 
                        area of research, maintain the integrity of the 
                        research process, and organize the professional 
                        lives of related researchers serve as 
                        indispensable venues within which scholars 
                        circulate research findings and debate their 
                        interpretation; and
            (2) the Congress recognizes that the principles and 
        procedures described in paragraph (1) fully apply only to 
        public universities and to private universities that present 
        themselves as bound by the canons of academic freedom; and
            (3) it is the sense of the Congress that private 
        institutions choosing to restrict academic freedom on the basis 
        of creed have an obligation to be as explicit as is possible 
        about the scope and nature of these restrictions.
                                 <all>