Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is essential in institutions of higher education if they are to reach their proper contribution to the mutual good. The objective of this includes the free search for accuracy and its free exhibition. It is that which justifies academic freedom, not the interest of the individual faculty member or even the interest of the institute or department.

Academic freedom is the freedom to engage in research, scholarship, or other creative work in order to expand knowledge, to publish research findings, to instruct and to learn in an atmosphere of unfettered free inquiry and exposition.

The rights of the faculty member and the student to academic freedom, however, comfort with them duties and responsibilities. The faculty member is entitled to full freedom to engage in research, collaborate, funding their research, scholarship, and creative work and to publish or produce the results, subject to responsible performance of these and other academic responsibilities. The faculty member is likewise entitled to freedom in teaching and discussing the subject matter. Nevertheless, as in research, the concomitant of this freedom must be a commitment to accuracy and integrity. Controversy is a normal aspect of free academic inquiry and teaching, and it is proper to incorporate both the knowledge and the opinions of the faculty member into that which is taught; however, the freedom to teach must be linked with a perpetual effort to distinguish between knowledge and belief.

Faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be distinctly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.

The INADS faculty member is a member of a learned profession, and an esteemed employee of an educational institution. When the faculty member speaks or writes as a citizen, he or she should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but the faculty member’s special position in the community imposes special obligations. As a person of learning and an educator, he or she should remember that the public may judge the profession and the institution by his or her utterances. Hence the faculty member should be at all times accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that he or she is not speaking for the institution.

This policy applies to all the faculty members of the institute.