Notes
- Any person may file a written complaint alleging a law school’s noncompliance with an ABA Accreditation Standard, including those related to academic freedom or security of position, with the Managing Director’s Office of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. See ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools Rule 40. Any request for assistance to the AALS from a faculty member on a matter of academic freedom or tenure will be referred to the AAUP. See AALS Executive Comm. Reg. 3.7(d).
- The Joint Academic Freedom Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education and Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) have issued a Statement of Principles on academic freedom, professional responsibility, privacy and confidentiality, clinical independence, and extramural speech.
- Over the years, Tulane University officials have taken starkly different positions on the academic freedom of law clinic faculty when the actions of its environmental law clinic drew threats of retaliation from two different governors.
Former Tulane University President Eamon Kelly explained his view of the position of the university when someone disagrees with the statements or work of its faculty:
“In the tradition of academic freedom, sometimes our professors express outrageous and provocative opinions. Often, people interpret those opinions not as expressions of academic freedom but as the university’s position. That is a troubling misinterpretation. . . . The truth is, we don’t take sides. . . . [O]ur professors conduct research and service across the spectrum of opinions. The only thing that is ever certain is that, at any given time, everyone on every side of an issue is likely to find the opinions and work of some faculty members at Tulane offensive, if not downright infuriating.”
Eamon M. Kelly, Kelly: Faculty Views are Their Own, Not Tulane’s, Times-Picayune (New Orleans, La.), Sept. 30, 1993, at B6.
A later provost defended the 2025 restrictions the university imposed on the Tulane environmental clinic faculty. The provost argued that the principle of institutional neutrality justified the law school dean’s pre-approval of “all external communications that are not client-based” by the environmental clinic’s faculty, although similar restrictions were not imposed on any other law school or university faculty.
Letter from Robin Forman, Sr. Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Tulane University, to the Faculty (June 18, 2025). - The AAUP’s most recent statement on institutional neutrality warns that university decisions on neutrality must be made with an eye to their effects on academic freedom and shared governance. AAUP, On Institutional Neutrality (Feb. 2025).
- A committee reviewing Oregon Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic explained why the fact that a clinic takes clients with certain problems or communicates certain positions does not violate the policy on institutional neutrality:
“Institutional neutrality applies to the institution as a whole. . . . If one unit of the University is especially involved with an activity which espouses a particular perspective, or is involved with individuals or organizations with a certain point of view, this does not, by itself, violate the principle of institutional neutrality. There are many units of the university, and many points of view. . . . It is institutional neutrality, the absence of official approval or disapproval, which makes such a variety possible.”
Report of the Ad Hoc Study Committee for the Environmental Law Clinic, University of Oregon School of Law (Nov. 30, 1988). - Echoing the concern that clinic teachers without tenure have felt more vulnerable to political attacks, particularly if the interference comes from within the university itself, James Fishman observed that “[t]he hierarchical structure of the law schools and the attenuated protections of academic freedom have, in some cases, made interference in clinics easier, for clinicians are more vulnerable than traditional faculty.” James J. Fishman, Tenure: Endangered or Evolutionary Species, 38 Akron L. Rev. 771, 786 (2005).
- Avital Nathman and Jake Lowe warn of the problem of private donor influence over university decisions, including improper intrusion into the academic freedom of a faculty member’s decisions about a course or program’s objectives and operations. Avital N. Nathman & Jake Lowe, Protecting Academic Freedom with Transparent Funding: Challenging Harmful Donor Influence, Academe (Winter 2023).