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Lambton College serves the common good of its community and society through scholarship – the pursuit, creation, application and dissemination of knowledge. Scholarship is supported and encouraged through the provision and guarantee of academic freedom for teachers, researchers and students.
Academic freedom includes the freedom, without restriction by prescribed doctrine or threat of institutional censorship, to teach and discuss; carry out research and disseminate and publish the results thereof; express one's opinion; acquire, preserve, and provide access to documentary material in all formats; participate in professional and representative academic bodies. [1] In short, "it is the right to teach, learn, study and publish free of orthodoxy or threat of reprisal and discrimination."[2]
Academic freedom must be based on reasoned discourse, rigorous extensive research and scholarship, and peer review. Evidence and truth must be the guiding principles. Academic freedom is constrained by the professional standards of the relevant discipline and the responsibility of the institution to organize its academic mission. [3]
The constraint of institutional requirements recognizes that the academic mission, like other work, has to be organized according to institutional needs. This includes the institution’s responsibility to select and appoint faculty and staff, to admit and discipline students, to establish and control curriculum, to make organizational arrangements for the conduct of academic work, to certify completion of a program and to grant degrees.[4]
Faculty must be committed to the highest ethical standards in their teaching and research. They must be free to examine data, question assumptions and be guided by evidence. Faculty have an equal responsibility to submit their knowledge and claims to rigorous and public review by peers who are experts in the subject matter under consideration and to ground their arguments in the best available evidence.[5]
The content of this policy is drawn in part from the Fanshawe College policy 1-J-05 Academic Freedom – Rights and Responsibilities
[1]Canadian Association of University Teachers, https://www.caut.ca/pages.asp?page=247&lang=1
[2] Ibid, http://www.caut.ca/pages.asp?page=140
[3] Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, http://www.aucc.ca/media-room/news-and-commentary/canadas-universities-adopt-new-statement-on-academic-freedom/
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid