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Academic freedom is a professional code that is in place in higher education in general and at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder in particular to protect faculty members’ ability to teach and perform their scholarly, creative, and research activities in the highest manner of professionalism and integrity. It is also in place to protect students’ ability to learn and to engage in inquiry and discussion in the classroom and related educational spaces. Under the principles of academic freedom, discourse and inquiry are limited only by the established disciplinary standards for knowledge production.

Academic freedom has two key facets: 1) the rights afforded to faculty members to create and disseminate knowledge and seek truth, subject to the standards of their disciplines and the rational methods by which truth is established; and 2) the responsibilities they have to uphold the highest standards of evidence and inclusion. Academic freedom also supports the rights and responsibilities of students to pursue their studies and to formulate their own views on the matters being taught, subject to the academic requirements and disciplinary standards within a program of study or course.

The idea of academic freedom in the university was defined by the Association of American University Professors as comprising the following central tenets:

1. Teachers are entitled to freedom in research and creative activities and in the publication and display of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, and they are responsible for exercising care to not introduce into their teaching controversial or irrelevant matter that has no relation to their subject.
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and employees of an educational institution; they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should understand their special obligations as such (AAUP, 1940, excerpted from p. 14).