ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the frequent neglect of faculty collegial duty to defend academic freedom publicly. The employment rights of free speech granted to all university professors are conditioned upon the correlative obligation of the faculty as a whole to enforce the competency and ethical constraints of the discipline when individual professors do not meet them. The responses indicate a very limited and generalized understanding of the rights of academic freedom and no recognition of the correlative duties of academic freedom. Despite a number of periods of zealotry and seventy-five years of development of the rights of professional academic freedom, the academy's public defence of academic freedom in the three most recent waves of zealotry has been weak. There are a number of tentative possible explanations for the faculty accommodation and acquiescence in the face of zealotry. Many university presidents and deans have inadequately protected professional academic freedom in the last three periods of zealotry.
