Measuring the Value of Academic Freedom in the Classroom: How Professors’ Opinions Affect Students’ Learning and Performance, an Ezra Hale Lecture Series

Speaker: Tim Bakken, Professor of law in the Department of Law & Philosophy at the United States Military Academy

Short Bio: Bakken has worked in civil and criminal litigation in New York City, at law firms, and as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn. He has been a visiting scholar or fellow at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, University of Sydney Law School, Columbia University School of Law, New York Law School, and Australian National University College of Law.

He was an advisor to the National Military Academy of Afghanistan in Kabul, where he created the Department of Law. He has been a visiting professor at Ural State Law University in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and the University of Chile in Santiago as a Fulbright Specialist.

Abstract: Interpreted by the courts as a constitutional right, academic freedom, in theory, permits college teachers to express their expert opinions so that student will receive an education that is based on a search for truth, free from influences that would otherwise limit the search. This lecture concerns what happens when colleges, formally or informally, inhibit professors from expressing their opinions in class. Sometimes, the inhibitors in this academic environment are often fellow professors, as well as individual professors who censure themselves. The lecture explores how even tenured professors and advanced students may not perceive the many variables that lead to constraints on their communication and argumentation. Learning can become suboptimal, and the consequences can be long-lasting.

Join the lecture via ZOOM.

Please submit interpreting requests to myAccess.rit.edu.

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