Stop Arguing Like a Progressive
A response to Elisha Baker’s article published in The Columbia Daily Spectator last December titled “On the abuse of faculty immunity”
On December 9, Elisha Baker CC ’26, a prominent pro-Israel advocate on campus, wrote an op-ed in The Columbia Daily Spectator titled “On the abuse of faculty immunity,” in which he condemns the University’s response to faculty involvement in the Gaza encampments. From this very real concern, Baker comes to the conclusion that professorial academic freedom is to blame, and claims that it is “certainly worth questioning the wisdom of tenure altogether.”
I take issue with Baker’s explicit attack on academic freedom, as it contradicts conservative thinking. I bring this up because it is short-sighted for pro-Israel advocates like Baker to condemn the outcomes of progressive thinking, like encampments and decolonization, while readily adopting that same frame of mind when it suits him or her.
I agree with Baker that academic freedom should not be invoked to shield political activism or propaganda, much less participation in encampments—but this point is not particularly controversial. Since the term entered mainstream usage, “academic freedom” has consistently been understood not to protect explicit activism outside the scholarly context. Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers argued as early as 1923, in The Idea of the University, that academic freedom cannot justify “practical objectives, educational bias, or political propaganda.”
In the context of Israel–Palestine, for example, academic freedom would protect a professor’s controversial research or classroom teaching, but not faculty participation in political encampments. The problem, then, is not with academic freedom as a principle, but with how it has been selectively invoked—and selectively ignored—in practice.
Baker, however, does not merely critique failures in how academic freedom is enforced. He challenges academic freedom itself by first misrepresenting the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) core tenets. Baker states that the 1940 AAUP Statement “grants faculty members total disciplinary immunity.” Yet that same statement explicitly outlines professional expectations, substantive limitations, and grounds for discipline.
The AAUP recognizes that scholars sometimes speak as individuals rather than as representatives of their universities. Even so, scholars “should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.” Recognizing that a scholar can hold dual identities does not mean they are immune to accountability by their institution, just that they are not property of it.
To be clear, the AAUP does not govern universities, nor do its statements mechanically dictate outcomes. My claim is narrower: by mischaracterizing the AAUP statements, Baker is able to present academic freedom as inadequate and argues instead for a more radical approach—one that expands administrative power by treating existing procedural constraints as insufficient.
Ironically, Baker argues like a progressive. He casts the University’s obligations in moral terms, claiming that the current lack of action is not “morally defensible,” and insists that accountability “is the only way to restore and protect” the University’s values. Granted, the University does have moral obligations, but basing administrative policy on some vague sense of “morality” is far from sensible. By empowering administrators to determine what they deem morally righteous, and by appealing to no standard beyond his own moral judgment and political cause, he transforms moral responsibility into a matter of relativism—who is in charge, and what “cause” currently takes precedence in our social conscience. Given Baker’s own skepticism toward progressive moral governance, he should be concerned about the logical consequences of his writing.
All political sides can attest to administrative incompetence, or at least to a pendulum-like tendency toward overzealousness. Tenure is a tempering force in the academy, ensuring that no matter how the culture shifts, professors in the ideological minority are free to teach. These minority professors are often, but not always, conservatives.
Cloaked in the same language Baker now uses, administrators and universities once believed they were defending “universal values” and “morality” by ostracizing conservative or outspoken non-leftist professors. This same language was used at our own university to redefine its purpose—not as a place of truth-seeking, but as an explicitly anti-racist institution.
Academic freedom defender Gregory Borse warned against dismantling tenure in moments of perceived cultural or political ascendancy–a period Baker’s cause is currently experiencing. In a 2019 article, he argues that for the conservative, preserving tenure is not about protecting his own opinions. Rather, he made the counterintuitive but essential claim that to think in principles is itself to be conservative.
In the context of tenure, this means to act according to what one takes to be general, timeless rules that apply regardless of who benefits in a particular case. To do otherwise is to admit that one’s values are conditional. That commitment, in turn, demands a willingness to defend a progressive—not because of his views, but because of the principles that sustain free expression for you as well. By this standard, Baker’s willingness to empower administrators to wield moral authority simply because they are acting on his side is a direct violation.
The radical impulse, by contrast, is intellectual amnesia: a failure to remember that political and cultural power shifts, and that today’s moral consensus will not always favor you. It is the failure to recognize that momentum can reverse. Baker’s argument reflects this attitude. It focuses on his immediate cause rather than on the principle that safeguards all views, including his own. Such thinking is an unfortunate form of relativism, driven by a desire to keep pace with change. A desire that will inevitably end up hurting him in the future.
I sympathize with Baker’s frustration with academic freedom. The concept is often instrumentalized as a catch-all defense for questionable, if not heinous, speech. Columbia’s prevailing understanding of academic freedom reflects an antiperfectionist view, which asserts that the university must remain neutral on questions of morality and that any institutional policing of self-expression is itself immoral. This framework was on display when former president Minouche Shafik, testifying before Congress, denounced visiting professor Mohamed Abdou after he posted on October 11, 2023, “I’m with the resistance, be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.” In response, students and petitioners characterized Shafik’s condemnation as a racialized “McCarthyist backlash against pro-Palestinian speech.” Against this backdrop, Baker is not completely unreasonable to claim that “such a concept of academic freedom has no moral or intellectual credibility.”
What Baker—and Columbia—lacks, then, is a conservative account of academic freedom that grounds moral authority in the University’s purpose. The conservative understanding of academic freedom, as articulated by Princeton professor Robert P. George, avoids this problem. Freedom is not an end in itself, but an instrument ordered toward a higher purpose: the pursuit of Truth. Toward that end, we as a community recognize that we are all obligated “to maintain a milieu of freedom on which scholars of goodwill can rely…for the sake of the common good of the academic community.”
We do not give up on academic freedom even when we witness obvious abuses. This restraint does not require defending obvious immorality. The conservative knows that the ideal of truth, and consequently academic freedom, is too precious to toss out—even when our colleagues get things wrong.
The remarkable feature of this approach is that by orienting the entire university toward truth and the pursuit of knowledge, the University teaches itself how to act. It does not need to reinvent its moral and intellectual identity every five years in response to the latest controversy it finds itself embroiled in. It exists so that we are compelled, as a community, to deliberate together and exercise restraint in service of a common goal.
These are the “University’s values” Baker invokes but does not elaborate on. This type of solution is often unappealing and unpopular because it indicts all of us. A truth-seeking culture requires active participation. This may even mean tolerating pro-Palestinian influence within the AAUP. Not as endorsement, but because we are called to cultivate a culture, not merely to opine.
I write about Baker’s piece not to single him out, but to draw attention to a faulty mindset. It is a mindset that does little to help any serious effort to respond to what happened at Columbia. The last thing Columbia needs is a perpetual state of ideological disorder. Baker’s logic does just that. By condemning the fruits of a worldview—the Gazan encampments—while simultaneously relying on that same worldview for his own ends, he produces confusion and signals that standards and principles are ultimately optional. If this logic prevails, there is little reason to think the conditions of 2023–2024 will not reappear. What we need instead is stability. I believe that no matter how begrudgingly students may have to admit it, stability requires some conservative logic.
Baker’s case reflects a broader tendency that extends beyond any single issue or ideology—progressive, conservative, or otherwise. It is the tendency to conclude that because abuses occur, the ideal itself is no longer worth defending: that individual failures are sufficient grounds to lower one’s standards and abandon principles. To me, this dispiritedness anywhere is unfortunate. Those who abuse academic freedom should instead serve as further evidence of why preserving the ideal is all the more urgent.
Ms. Chaudhry is a senior at Columbia College studying history. She is a deputy editor for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.