Because of academic freedom, faculty are free to be innovative, creative, and controversial, if necessary, without fear of retribution or retaliation.

Academic freedom does not give faculty members a license to ignore course descriptions or be careless with their teaching methods or materials. Mechanisms must be in place to ensure that students receive the basic objectives of the course.

Yet there is good reason for faculty to demand autonomy. Materials, including texts, imposed on any faculty member can diminish the quality of instruction for a number of reasons -- lackluster writing or presentation, different perspective, too complex, too simple, or a professor's plain dissatisfaction with the tenor of a text.

If academic freedom is to exist, it must exist for all faculty, and not just for a select group. It is dispiriting to a professor if the assigned text is abrasive to his or her viewpoint, emphasizes what he or she deems unimportant, or ignores aspects that he or she feels should be included.

A department may choose and suggest a text, but it should not mandate that the text be used by all. The department members who chose to use a departmental text have exercised their academic freedom; the faculty who chose not to use the departmental text have also exercised their academic freedom. But department members who impose a text on other department members have abridged their colleagues' rights.

Actually, this might be considered a qualified no. There is no question as to the importance of academic freedom to higher education. But part of a faculty member's responsibility is to create a coherent academic program that supports the entire department, not just an individual member. Faculty in the same department should be able to work as a team.

It makes sense for a department to establish standardized learning objectives and ways of measuring outcomes. Determining that a single text best meets these objectives in a core course may not sit well with all faculty, but it doesn't abridge an individual faculty member's academic freedom.

More important is how this decision was made. If the faculty teaching the course in question had an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, and through this democratic process this text was chosen by the department as a whole as best serving students, I think dissenters would not have much of an argument.

Besides, any faculty member worth his/her salt who was not satisfied with a required text could easily find a way to work in preferred texts as supplemental required reading. Indeed, comparing the texts would serve to strengthen the class and assignments. All members of a department should be working in concert to accomplish departmental goals while protecting each individual's academic freedom.

* Catherine Boudreau is a professor of office administration at Massasoit Community College in Brocton, Massachusetts.

* Ann Shadwick, a librarian at San Francisco State University , is on the Board of Directors of the California Teachers Association.