Academic Freedom and Academic Values in Sponsored Research

Abstract

In this Article I examine the traditional American conception of academic freedom and analyze its implications for universities formulating policies on the acceptance of sponsored research. I begin by reviewing the basic policy statements of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on academic freedom to identify both the academic values implicit in those statements and the assumptions about institutional relationships and individual incentives underlying their prescriptions for advancing those values. I then evaluate the validity of those underlying assumptions in contemporary sponsored research and argue that academic freedom as traditionally conceived might no longer effectively advance academic values in externally sponsored research. Against this background, I examine recent policies of thirty-nine universities on the acceptance of classified and proprietary research and analyze the roles of academic freedom and academic values in formulating university research policy.