THE PLACE OF DISSENT IN INQUIRY, LEARNING, AND REFLECTION

Since the advent of the modern university in the United States, dissent has been a cherished, protected right. The university has had a long history worldwide as a corporate form. While dissent has been reserved for individual scholars, universities have only rarely engaged in dissent as corporate or institutional bodies. When they have done so, such institutions became “partisan camps” which tolerated no individual dissent. This essay argues that the campus antiwar movement of the 1960s was, in part, an effort to force corporate dissent upon the universities and constituted a substantial threat to academic freedom—one which the professoriate turned back. Current efforts by the political right or left to establish partisan camps on campuses are no less dangerous to the right of individual dissent.