<< Back 8/28/02 WCU’s Faculty Senate resolves to support academic freedom SMN In the wake of controversy over a summer reading assignment at UNC, the Faculty Senate at Western Carolina University has approved a resolution in support of academic freedom. Western’s Faculty Senate unanimously approved the resolution Thursday, Aug. 22, at its first meeting of the new school year. The resolution states: “We, the members of the Faculty Senate at Western Carolina University, reaffirm academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas and information.” The faculty action comes after legal and legislative challenges to a summer reading assignment for incoming freshmen and transfer students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where students were assigned to read Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells. Three unnamed students and a Christian organization sued the university in an attempt to halt discussions of the book, saying it is unconstitutional for a publicly funded university to require students to study a specific religion. UNC officials have defended the selection of the book for the summer reading program as timely and important after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., refused to halt the reading program, and discussions of the book were held as scheduled on Aug. 19, in Chapel Hill. Newton Smith, associate professor of English and chairman of Western’s Faculty Senate, also discussed the issues of academic freedom during his remarks at the General Faculty Meeting Thursday, Aug. 15. “A university is a messy place. It is a cauldron of discourse where the ideas of an age, even those most hallowed by those who govern, are tested. Academic freedom of discussion must tolerate all these ideas, even if they are a threat to those who would preserve orthodoxy or the status quo. And they are a threat. The church or the state over history has caned, expelled, excommunicated and even beheaded teachers to stop the spread of radical ideas that threatened those who held the purse strings or wielded the rod of power,” Smith said. “Yet, it is only because of the free exchange of ideas that scholars can question the old theories and propose new theories of cosmology, economics, social structure and evolutionary biology,” he said. “Because of this discourse, we can compose the texts that contain or shape the thoughts of the next generation and train the teachers who will mold the ideas, the understanding and the sense of social responsibility and justice for generations to come.” Western Carolina’s selection for this year’s freshman summer reading program, like many others across the country, has not been controversial. It is A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, an award-winning story of scientist Robert Sapolsky’s years of field research on the relationship between stress and disease among one troop of baboons. Sapolsky will give a free public talk at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4, in the recital hall of the Coulter Building at Western. Western Carolina has had a summer reading program since 1999, and the university gained national attention of its own in 2000 when it selected a previously unpublished student work for its reading selection — In Mind/In Country: From Mount Kenya to Tenewi Island by Honors College student Worth Allen of Charlotte. The book described Allen’s three-month study-abroad trip to Eastern Africa, a time when he experienced many of the emotions nearly all freshmen feel, including homesickness and self-doubt. The unusual reading selection attracted national media attention, including a mention in the Wall Street Journal.