A Tale of Two Reports

The following links below are to 1) the draft report of the select committee on academic freedom and to 2) the final report. The original report drafted under the supervision of Representative Gibson Armstrong, sponsor of the authorizing legislation (HR 177) for the Pennsylvania Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education of the Pennsylvania House. The Committee held four sets of hearings between September 2005 and June 2006 at locations throughout the state. It differs from the final report in several crucial respects. The final report was the product of an eleventh hour coup by the Democratic minority on the committee and two Republicans. In the final report, the entire “Summary of Testimony” – in other words the actual report of what transpired – was deleted. This made possible the insertion of a new “finding” to the effect that abuses of students’ academic freedom in Pennsylvania were “rare.” This was duly reported by the press as the central finding of the Committee. But the deleted “Summary of Testimony” (preserved in the draft) explained exactly why claims of such abuses were rare: Prior to the Pennsylvania hearings, students had no rights that would allow them to complain about such abuses and there was no grievance machinery available to them to air complaints about violations of their academic freedom. The recommendations in the final Committee report were also watered down. Every reference to the need to create “student-specific” rights, for example, was removed. This was an attempt to protect university administrators from embarrassment. But it did not prevent them from recognizing that a serious gap in university regulations did exist, which Temple and Penn State proceeded to rectify. The new student-specific academic freedom policies adopted by Temple and Penn State are contained in the Appendix to this report, and are included in the Appendix to the official report as well.

1) Draft Report

2) Final Report