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Pepperdine University

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.