Statement of Academic Freedom

The Tenure Policy of Pepperdine University, Section XI states:

 The University realizes that academic freedom and economic security are essential for acquiring and maintaining a strong faculty. The faculty member must enjoy that freedom characteristic of the best in higher education as it has developed in Western culture. A faculty member, while recognizing a special responsibility to the University as a contributing scholar, requires freedom of discussion in the classroom and freedom of professional research and publication of results. Dedicated to the free pursuit of truth, a faculty member should consider it a basic duty to encourage freedom of inquiry in peers and in students. While abiding by and supporting the policies, ideals, and procedures of the University, the faculty member has the right of peacefully seeking revision of policies. Free inquiry and the pursuit of truth are indispensable conditions for the attainment of the goals of any university. A faculty member, while enjoying academic freedom, shares responsibility with the administration for the preservation of this freedom. Therefore, a faculty member is free in the quest for truth within a broad but intricate framework of responsibility to colleagues and students as sharers in this quest, to the University with its ideals and purposes, and to society with its basic mores and morals.

Principles of Academic Freedom at Pepperdine University 

1. Faculty members are entitled to full freedom in research and in the presentation and publication of the results. 

2. Faculty members are entitled to freedom in teaching. They should not, however, persistently obtrude controversial matter into their teaching that has no relation to their subject, broadly understood. This caution must not be interpreted to discourage what is “controversial.” Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry, which this statement is designed to foster. Similarly, a demand for civility must not be used to discourage vigorous discussion of controversial matters. 

3. Faculty members are entitled to freedom as they participate in the intellectual life of the university and their fields, including organization of and participation in symposia, lectures, and like events. In keeping with their role in shared governance, faculty members are entitled to seek revision of policies. 

4. As scholars and educators,faculty should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence, they should at all times seek to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, to show respect for others, to take care not to ridicule students or others who are subject to their authority, and to make appropriate efforts to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution. 

These principles are adapted from AAUP’s Statement on Academic Freedom.