ABSTRACT
The right of the professor to follow an argument whithersoever it may lead either in his research or in his teaching is a claim at least as ancient as Plato. The establishment of this claim, however, in the hearts and minds of the American public has undergone numerous vicissitudes. In the colonial college practically no claim was laid to academic freedom. Religious orthodoxy was rather the rule. As the intellectual frontier shifted from religion to politics during the eighteenth century, the spirit of liberty accompanying the French and American revolutions began knocking on academic portals. But it was not until the introduction of German graduate methods of research onto American campuses in the late nineteenth century that academic freedom became a cause célèbre. Yet even as late as the twentieth century the professional right to academic freedom had not received an altogether secure lodgment in the pattern of American thinking. Recurrent social crises of war, economic depression, and international tension periodically threatened its very existence. To appreciate the later extent and temper of academic freedom, it will be necessary now to relive its various viscissitudes at some length.
