Loyola University Chicago, School of Law: LAW eCommons
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Academic Freedom and the Catholic University: An Historical Review, a Conceptual Analysis, and a Prescriptive Proposal
No full textThis Essay is composed of four parts. In Part I, we sketch the origins of the concept of academic freedom in colleges and universities in the United States. We then examine the contemporary understanding of the concept as set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Next, we provide a brief history of the experience of academic freedom in Catholic universities in the United States. This history includes a series of pivotal controversies in the 1950s-1960s at four Catholic universities: the University of Notre Dame, St. John’s University, the University of Dayton, and the Catholic University of America. It also includes a brief review of two transformative documents — the Land O’Lakes Statement (1967) and The Catholic University in the Modern World (1972) — in which leading Catholic educators endeavored to articulate a conception of a modern Catholic university that included a robust role for academic freedom. In light of these developments, Catholic universities revised their policies on academic freedom.
In Part II of the Essay, we offer a conceptual critique of academic freedom as defined in the 1940 Statement. We argue that this widely accepted articulation of the concept is question begging at best, and at worst internally incoherent. The AAUP definition of academic freedom is question begging because it assumes a particular conception of the university as normative and then draws its definition of academic freedom from that conception. There are, however, other reasonable conceptions of what constitutes a “university” with their own entailed conceptions of academic freedom, such that the AAUP’s implicit assumption stands undefended. Furthermore, the AAUP definition is internally incoherent. The AAUP conception of academic freedom declares that every idea must be subject to challenge and possible refutation while, at the same time, harboring certain ideas as unassailable and immune from criticism. All rational thought, including the 1940 Statement, must proceed by assuming the truth of certain presuppositions. Yet, without argument, the 1940 Statement singles out religious propositions as uniquely obnoxious to the academic enterprise.
In Part III of the Essay, we argue that the many striking contradictions between the conception of academic freedom (as articulated in the 1940 Statement and typically defended in academic circles) and the actual practice of academic freedom in American universities (private and public, secular and religious) indicates that few people actually believe in the AAUP version of the principle. This disconnect also suggests that the 1940 Statement is not so much the articulation of a foundational principle of academic life as an ideology that serves ends other than those it purports to advance. Of course, some version of academic freedom is necessary for universities to fulfill their mission as conveyors of knowledge and centers of inquiry. This is no less true of Catholic universities.
In Part IV of the Essay, we offer some practical suggestions for how Catholic universities can remain faithful to the truth professed by the Church, while giving their faculty members the freedom necessary to raise questions, conduct research, and participate in the great conversation that is the essence of the scholarly enterprise
Arlington Heights Won in the Supreme Court but the Fair Housing Act\u27s Goal of Promoting Racial Integration Saved the Low-Income Housing
No full textIn the early 1970’s, a developer sought a zoning change to a parcel of land in Arlington Heights, Illinois that would allow for the construction of government-subsidized low income housing. Arlington Heights denied the zoning change and the developer and several potential residents of the housing sued Arlington Heights arguing that this denial violated both equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). In Vil. Of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Housing Dev., 429 U.S. 252 (1977), the case reached the United States Supreme Court on the equal protection issue and the Court held that the plaintiffs did not establish an equal protection violation because they failed to prove that a racially discriminatory purpose had motivated the denial of the zoning change by Arlington Heights officials. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower courts to consider plaintiffs’ claims under the FHA.
On remand, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the denial of the zoning change that the developer sought from Arlington Heights had the racially discriminatory effect of perpetuating residential racial segregation and unless another low income housing project could feasibly be built there, the denial of the zoning change constituted a violation of the FHA. After this decision by the Seventh Circuit, the parties entered into a consent decree in which Arlington Heights agreed to annex another parcel of property and allow the construction of the developer’s low income housing project on it. The developer’s project was eventually built on the land that Arlington Heights annexed and the low income housing project opened to residents in 1983.
The construction of the developer’s low income housing project in Arlington Heights was facilitated by the Seventh Circuit’s decision that a denial of housing that has a racially discriminatory effect may violate the FHA even if a racially discriminatory purpose is not established. In 2013, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a regulation that indicated that the FHA could be violated by housing decisions that had a discriminatory effect. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court definitively determined in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community v. ICP, 135 S.Ct. 2507 (2015) that a housing practice that has a disproportionately adverse effect on minorities and otherwise lacks a legitimate rationale is actionable under the FHA.
The purpose of this article is to analyze how the Seventh Circuit’s decision in the Arlington Heights case represents an important judicial precedent for using the FHA to challenge housing decisions that perpetuate housing segregation. The article also seeks to explain how the Seventh Circuit’s decision that Arlington Heights must accommodate this construction of government-subsidized low income housing in order to comply with the FHA presages interpretations of the FHA by both HUD and the Supreme Court that occurred more 35 years later. These broad interpretations of the FHA create valuable tools to achieve one of the primary goals of the FHA-the residential integration of the races in the United States. Finally, this article will address 2018 efforts by HUD to review its 2013 regulation in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015. This article will examine how HUD’s regulatory review process might alter how the discriminatory effects standard is applied to determine whether the FHA has been violated
Successes and Failures of Social Health Insurance Schemes in Africa - Nigeria versus Ghana and Rwanda: A Comparative Analysis
Get PDFDERACIALIZATION AND DEMOCRACY
Get PDFThe United States suffers the conthiued costs of mahitainhig a racial hierarchy. Enhanced diversity and growhig realization of the economic costs of that hierarchy could lead to democratic pressure for reform. Yet, in the U.S., elites on the radical right seek to entrench themselves in power through the constriction of voting power and the strategic use of the racial hierarchy as a political tool. This Article traces the anti-democratic efforts of the radical right to limit the political power of the nation\u27s enhanced diversity, and to utilize archaic governance measures to entrench themselves politically, regardless of the costs of allowing the racial hierarchy to continue to fester. Antidemocratic efforts to limit voting power to assure non-democratic governance and outcomes recently scored significant success as recounted in this Article. The anti-democratic contrivances to limit the power of enhanced diversity requires comparable countermeasures to vindicate the core value of expanded democracy that find its roots in our history and in the Constitution\u27s trajectory towards ever greater democratic governance. This Article surveys countermeasures that could lead to the preservation and even expansion of democratic governance. It concludes that only through a renewed pursuit of expansive voting rights can we restore our democracy and move the nation away from its racist past
