UT panel weighs in on intellectual freedom – Knoxville News Sentinel – Knoxville News Sentinel

Since 2013, the student group Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee has hosted Sex Week at the University of Tennessee as a venue for students to discuss sexuality and relationships. Wochit

A student asks a question at the symposium on intellectual freedom Monday, April 10, 2017, at the University of Tennessee. The symposium comes in the midst of lawmakers proposing an "intellectual diversity" office at the university.(Photo: J. Miles Cary for the USA Today Network --Tennessee)

A panel of University of Tennessee faculty members tackled the issue of intellectual freedom on campus Monday night, including how it has come up in recent debates about freedom of speech on campus and how lawmakers have reacted.

"The purpose of tonight was to try and understand and put into a historical perspective the pressures that are put on intellectual freedom," said Ernest Freeberg, head of the department of history at UT and co-organizer of Monday's discussion at the UT College of Law. "We've seen a lot of that over the last couple of years but if you go back you will find it's a long standing issue between the university, the legislature and even sometimes the larger community."

The discussion featuring six faculty members from UT comes on the heels of the de-funding of UT's Office for Diversity and Inclusion by the state legislature and repeated backlash over the organization of Sex Week on campus. It also comes as lawmakers have proposed a bill preserving free speech on campus and the creation of an intellectual diversity office on campus.

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The conflict that such proposals can create between lawmakers and campus communities happens nationally, but it's also "important for us to understand our own history and put today's controversies into perspective," Freeberg said.

In 1952, for example, backlash erupted over the planned screening of four Charlie Chaplin films on the Knoxville campus because of the actor's role in a film satirizing Adolf Hitler.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon's presence at Neyland Stadium lead to a large anti-war protest and and dozens of arrests, including that of UT Professor Charles Reynolds, who ended up appealing his arrest to the U.S. Supreme Courtclaiming violation of his First Amendment right to free speech.

"What we've seen from history is this is a cyclical thing and at times different issues have arisen," Freebergsaid.

More recently, the organization of UT's Sex Week, offering sexual education and wellness programming often in a non-traditional way, has prompted backlash from the legislature leading to a change in the way student programming fees are used and playing a role in the de-funding of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion.

One of the greatest threats to intellectual freedom on campus is having tenured full-professors who are afraid to speak up because of fear of administrative censorship and that has resulted in UT acquiescence to the Tennessee legislature, said Mary McAlpin, a professor of modern languages and literature and one of Monday's speakers, who encouraged faculty members to be advocates for the issues they believe in.

"Tenure is a privilege and like all privileges it comes with related responsibility," McAlpin said. "It allows us to participate in shared governance with our administrators and to hold them accountable."

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UT panel weighs in on intellectual freedom - Knoxville News Sentinel - Knoxville News Sentinel