Frederick Hoxie

FREDERICK HOXIE
Swanlund Professor of History and Law

I have loved academic life since I entered graduate school more than forty years ago. Over the ensuing decades I have been grateful for the intellectual freedom that has been crucial for my research and appreciative of the enormous privilege I enjoy participating in university life and sharing my scholarship with students, colleagues, and the general public. While absorbed with my scholarly and educational career, however, I have also been aware that the freedoms I enjoy in my work require protection. Unfortunately, the qualities that make universities islands of innovation and creativity—tenure, shared governance, and rigorous standards of evaluation—frequently come under attack. When that occurs I trust faculty unions to protect those precious features of academic life and thus to ensure that universities will remain central to the growth and prosperity of civilized society.