Academic Freedom Is a National Security Imperative

According to its faculty handbook, the US Naval Academy embraces the American Association of University Professors’ “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.” Over the past year, however, the Naval Academy has gone wobbly on this commitment, as have the other Service Academies and War Colleges. School administrators have dropped majors, canceled courses, disinvited speakers, and issued lists of topics – even words – for professors to avoid.

After the Naval Academy was directed to remove books from Nimitz Library, retired Admiral James Stavridis warned of a general stifling of academic freedom.[1] But why should the military care about academic freedom?

Future officers, “if they are to provide the wise, balanced, and experienced direction which is required at all levels in the military forces… should have a background of general knowledge similar to that possessed by the graduates of our leading universities.” – Dwight D Eisenhower

What Is (And Is Not) Academic Freedom

Academic freedom in the United States traces its origins to the High Middle Ages.[2] Europe’s first universities depended on royal or papal protection from local priests and potentates opposed to their disruptive teachings. While imperial patronage offered some institutional autonomy, individual scholars’ freedom to venture beyond religious and scholastic orthodoxy was still centuries away.

Our modern conception of academic freedom emerges primarily from 19^th century German reforms. Wilhelm von Humboldt, founder of the University of Berlin, reimagined the purpose of ‘the university’ as the free pursuit of knowledge, regardless of obvious practical utility. For Humboldt, two freedoms were essential to fulfilling that purpose: Lehr-freiheit (a professor’s freedom to teach and research) and Lernfreiheit (a student’s freedom to seek knowledge).

When US universities such as Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Stanford first recast their institutions as ‘research universities’ in the final decades of the 19^th century, they informally adopted Humboldt’s model of academic freedom. Early controversies, however, revealed how vulnerable informal, uncodified rights were to encroachments from trustees, wealthy donors, and political interests. In response, philosophers John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy cofounded the American Association of University Professors to formalise academic freedom in the United States. AAUP’s foundational document, the ‘1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure’, presents a robust, scholarly defence of academic freedom. The ‘1940 Statement’ is an abbreviated restatement.

AAUP’s interpretation of academic freedom imports the Humboldtian rights to teach, research, and learn but also emphasises corresponding obligations. Viewed as a right, academic freedom recognises three protected domains:

1) The rights of researchers to choose their topics and publish their results, regardless of whom their findings may antagonise.

2) The rights of teachers to design their courses, choose instructional materials, assign grades, and express opinions in their classrooms.

3) The rights of scholars, as citizens, to speak in public without fear of institutional censorship or discipline.[3]

The only legitimate restraints on these rights are those “established and policed… by the community of trained researchers” and exercised through peer review, replication, debate, and granting (or denying) tenure.[4] Ideally, academic careers advance by impressing fellow scholars, not by pleasing patrons and politicians. Methodological rigor, sound evidence, and transparent inference are rewarded, flattery and self-censorship are not.

These broad freedoms do not license academics to do or say whatever they please. As the ‘1915 Declaration’ affirms, “there are no rights without corresponding duties.” Universities exist by permission of society and the state.[5] The state’s support – or at least its forbearance – is contingent on the university fulfilling its end of the bargain: producing knowledge for the welfare of mankind and preparing society’s rising generations. The rights which scholars enjoy oblige them to conduct their research in the spirit of disinterested inquiry, respect accepted methods and standards of evidence, and present their findings honestly and without distortion.

The inherent rights and duties of academic freedom empower and incentivise scholars to explore improbable hypotheses, publish unwelcome findings, and investigate long shots. Societies that protect these freedoms enjoy impressive scientific and cultural advances. When governments stifle academic freedom, innovation and progress predictably wither. One case illustrates both dynamics.

The rise of the modern US research university paralleled the retrenchment of academic freedom in 1930s Europe. Prominent European thinkers fled. Because the United States had institutionalised academic freedom with unrivaled, ‘don’t-tread-on-me’ energy, Europe’s displaced intellectuals found US colleges and universities singularly attractive. Among the émigré scholars drawn to the United States were Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and Thomas Mann. Liberated to pursue high-risk research and publish without fear, these great minds joined forces with native intelligentsia to defeat fascism, ensure US nuclear primacy, counter Soviet totalitarianism, elevate America’s cultural prestige, and transform the nation into a military, economic, diplomatic, and soft power colossus. The embrace of academic freedom did not merely coincide with the United States’ meteoric rise; it caused it.

Trade School or University?

Graduates of civilian institutions seek their fortunes in diverse fields. Military academies and war colleges, by contrast, feed a single industry. In this one regard, these institutions more closely resemble vocational schools than universities, prompting some to advocate for curricula that focuses entirely on technical competencies. Indeed, prior to World War II, a ‘technocratic’ conception of officership – and a trade-school approach to educating the US officer corps – dominated.[6]

“If imagination, tempered and guided by common sense and reason, is the scarce and valuable quality which I believe it to be, it behooves us to recognise the individuals who possess this disciplined imagination, to encourage and make full use of them.” – Admiral Raymond Spruance, Naval History and Heritage Command

The war decisively discredited this model. While the breathtaking pace of technological advancement confirmed the value of technically competent officers, World War II exposed a more urgent need: officers capable of critical thinking, moral reasoning, and strategic imagination. Senior flag and general officers returned from the war convinced that modern warfare “posed a number of challenging social, political, and economic problems” for which their officers had received “skimpy preparation, at best.”[7]

In 1950, while president of Columbia University, Dwight Eisenhower shared this insight with Defense Secretary James Forrestal: “Under present conditions,” he wrote, all commissioned officers must have “a background of general knowledge similar to that possessed by the graduates of our leading universities.”[8] For Eisenhower, modern warfare demanded habits of independent and critical thought that only a university education could provide.

Raymond Spruance, the first postwar president of the Naval War College, similarly concluded that the college’s historical focus on the mechanics of warfare ignored the evolving nature of officership. The curriculum, he insisted, must nurture officers with strategic intellects rather than the “technical types” who were competent on the bridge but “deficient in abstract imagination and reasoning.”[9]

Another Naval War College president, John Hayward (1966–68), led an unprecedented expansion of civilian academics’ influence on curricula and pedagogy. Lectures that blasted US foreign policy and questioned orthodoxy became routine.[10] Stansfield Turner’s presidency (1972–74) instituted a strategy-heavy curriculum that demanded 1,000 pages of reading per week and the prospect of expulsion for officers who could not keep up. “Always keep in mind,” he counseled students, “that the product which the country desperately needs is military men with the capability of solving complex problems…. Problems [that] are not solved by standard or pat solutions.”[11] West Point made similar reforms in the early post-war period, shifting its focus from preparing competent second lieutenants to grooming future generals.

The Naval Academy’s rendezvous with modernity was, by contrast, slow and fitful. Annapolis adhered to its prewar, trade-school emphasis, insisting that its purpose was production of “immediately utilisable junior officers.”[12] Courses such as ‘Naval Boilers’ were taught well into the 1950s.

Despite initial resistance, by the late 1950s the Naval Academy instituted reforms that put it on the same academic trajectory as West Point and the war colleges. Two superintendents, Charles Melson (1958–60) and James Calvert (1968–72), are rightly credited for the school’s academic Renaissance. However, at least as much credit belongs to a relentless gadfly who never served as superintendent: Hyman Rickover. After thousands of interviews with applicants for the nuclear power program, Rickover concluded NROTC produced superior candidates, noting a dearth of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills among Academy grads.[13] “If drastic steps are not taken immediately to improve the Service Academies,” Rickover warned a Senate panel, “I would advocate that you consider abolishing them.”[14] Between Melson and Calvert’s commitment to instituting a “space age curriculum” (as it was branded in the wake of Sputnik) and Rickover’s high-profile pressure campaign, the Naval Academy transitioned from its trade-school heritage. It replaced ‘Naval Boilers’ and similar courses with theoretically rigorous science and engineering programs. To promote critical thinking, it dropped its lockstep course sequence and introduced a wide range of majors, including robust social science and humanities offerings.

The Academy’s most consequential advances focused on faculty empowerment and academic freedom. Responding to Rickover’s critique that the officer-heavy faculty was academically weak, it set out to attract and retain prominent civilian scholars. Prior to 1960, a PhD was a rarity; by 1970, a terminal degree was the rule.[15] After hiring its first civilian academic dean, the Academy began removing barriers to meaningful faculty participation in academic policy. As civilian academics gained status, influence, and, most important, the freedom to teach and conduct research that scholars enjoy at elite academic institutions, the Academy began to attract high-caliber scholars and, ultimately, became an elite academic institution itself.

Loss of Talent

Retrenchment of academic freedom at the Service Academies and War Colleges likely will inspire a flight of talent. Indeed, some leading scholars in their fields have tied their resignations from West Point, the Naval and Air Force Academies, and the Army and Naval War Colleges to erosion of academic freedom.

But high-visibility departures do not tell the whole story. Other academics who thought they had found their dream jobs at Service Academies and War Colleges are back in the academic job market. For talented scholars preparing to enter academia, Service Academies and War Colleges will not be as appealing; serious scholars gravitate to institutions at which they can practice serious scholarship. Ultimately, the value of a Service Academy education will depreciate, driving down the quality of the applicant pool. 

Recourse

The art and science of leading troops in modern warfare integrates every branch of human knowledge. Graduates of the US Service Academies and War Colleges manage nuclear reactors hundreds of feet beneath the ocean’s surface, apply the concepts of aeronautical engineering at greater than the speed of sound, and routinely order other humans to run toward the sound of the guns. Not only must they master the laws of thermodynamics and equations that describe lift and thrust, but they also must learn to manage the human response to danger, fear, chaos, uncertainty, pain, and exhaustion.

The senior flag and general officers who fought World War II understood this and returned from the war inspired to initiate an academic Renaissance at the nation’s Service Academies and War Colleges. They succeeded. No longer are these schools merely “military seminaries.”[16] Today, they are recognised among the United States’ finest academic institutions.[17]

“Always keep in mind that the product which the country desperately needs is military men with the capability of solving complex problems… Problems [that] are not solved by standard or pat solutions” – Stansfield Turner

These accomplishments are in jeopardy. But what recourse is available? Although tradition and law limit the range of available responses, administrators, faculty, and staff are not without agency. Three options stand out.

First, stop “obeying in advance.”[18] The military virtue of taking initiative based on commander’s intent is no virtue when the commander’s intent is imprudent.

Second, seek legal remedies when possible. While academic freedom evolved as a professional norm, not law, it can claim limited legal status. In Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), the majority opinion listed “four essential freedoms of a university” (freedom to determine who teaches, what’s taught, how it’s taught, and who’s admitted). Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967) established academic freedom as a “special concern of the First Amendment.” In September 2025, Tim Bakken, the longest-serving civilian law professor at West Point, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 100 civilian faculty members alleging that new academy policies governing public speech and classroom discussion violated their First Amendment rights.

Finally, take a stand. This is not an issue that should trouble only academics. As our most venerated generation of war-tested flag and general officers understood, academic freedom at the Service Academies and War Colleges is a national security imperative.

This article originally appeared in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. Copyright U.S. Naval Institute. Reprinted with permission. For more great content from the U.S. Naval Institute, visit www.usni.org.

References

[1] John Ismay, ‘Who’s In and Who’s Out at the Naval Academy’s Library?’ The New York Times, 11 April 2025.

[2] See Henry Reichman, Understanding Academic Freedom (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025); and Justin Thorens, ‘Liberties, Freedom and Autonomy: A Few Reflections on Academia’s Estate’, Higher Education Policy19 (2006): 87–110.

[3] See Reichman, Understanding Academic Freedom, and Thorens, ‘Liberties, Freedom and Autonomy’.

[4] Reichman, 194.

[5] Thorens, ‘Liberties, Freedom and Autonomy,’ 89.

[6] John Hattendorf, Sailors and Scholars: The Centennial History of the U.S. Naval War College (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1984).

[7] John Lovell, Neither Athens Nor Sparta: The American Service Academies in Transition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 50.

[8] Quoted in John Masland and Laurence Radway, Soldiers and Scholars: Military Education and National Policy(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 28.

[9] Hattendorf, Sailors and Scholars, 183.

[10] Hattendorf, Sailors and Scholars, 255–56.

[11] Quoted in Hattendorf, 284.

[12] Lovell, Neither Athens Nor Sparta, 54.

[13] Lovell, 163–64.

[14] Quoted in Lovell, 164. Rickover’s influence was not subtle. During his first meeting with Superintendent Melson, for example, Rickover announced, “I’m not here for a briefing; I’m here to tell you what to think.” Lovell, 162.

[15] Lovell, 8.

[16] Lovell, 38.

[17] In the latest rankings from U.S. News and World Report, the Naval Academy is ranked #3 among national liberal arts colleges, Air Force Academy is #5, and West Point is in a three-way tie for #10. For Rhodes Scholarships awarded, West Point ranks #5, USNA is #10; and the Air Force Academy – founded more than a century after its sister schools – comes in at #13.

[18] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2017).