The National Association of Scholars has a related statement that defines academic freedom, and argues this freedom applies to both professors and students.

Here’s part of NAS’s press release:

The statement follows a debate between Wood and AAUP president Cary Nelson at the National Association of Scholars conference earlier this month, over “the meaning of academic freedom.” Nelson has written that academic freedom is “the principle that guarantees faculty members the right to speak and write as they please without interference from the university, the state, or the public.” In the NAS statement, Wood contrasts the AAUP “as they please” version with the NAS definition: “the right to pursue the truth according to disciplined forms of inquiry.”

Nelson’s definition only partially overlaps with the First Amendment; the Constitution protects speech and writing from interference from the state, and from public universities, but not from private universities or the general population. (Don’t ask me why the public is included here–I don’t understand how it would go about shutting up a professor, if not through a university or the state.)

The primary purpose of Wood’s definition is to cut out “as they please” and replace it with “according to disciplined forms of inquiry,” but against whom may this right be asserted? The government, the universities, and the public, as Nelson would have it, or something else?