Academic freedom and the unknown: credibility, criticism, and inquiry among the professoriate

In the U.S., military and intelligence personnel, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), scholars, professional organizations, legislators, journalists, and others are requesting study of UFOs, recently renamed Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) by the U.S. government. Yet disinformation, misidentifications, hoaxes, and entertainment cloud the subject. Combined, these factors pertain to wider debates about the parameters of academic freedom. Here, we asked faculty across 14 disciplines at 144 research universities (N = 1460) to register insights about UAP in the academy via confidential survey. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first national study to examine scholars’ evaluations of academic credibility and possible social or professional repercussions—including concerns for tenure, promotion, and academic freedom—in relation to UAP. Results suggest that faculty concern that conducting UAP-related research would jeopardize their tenure or promotion might exceed colleagues’ actual negativity toward such research on tenure or promotional votes. Only 7.4% of faculty responded that “Yes” they would vote negatively (“No” = 61.92%, “Maybe” = 27.95%), though 52.67% reported some degree of concern for tenure or promotion. Faculty more frequently reported some degree of concern for social rather than professional repercussions. Concern for ridicule totaled 69.04%. Among all faculty, 66.24% reported that their discipline was capable to some degree of evaluating the evidence or significance of UAP. The disciplines of physics (95.82%), philosophy (88.73%), anthropology (87.09%), and engineering (83.15%) most frequently reported capability. Those who most frequently responded “Not at All” capable belonged to economics (59.7%), literature/English (54.46%), nursing (53.33%), and art and design (51.52%). Notably, although physics faculty most frequently responded that their discipline was capable to some degree of evaluation, nearly three in four reported some degree of concern about ridicule. From 250 open-ended responses, we generated 14 themes pertaining to research or teaching. To promote transparency, highlight a range of perspectives, and facilitate debate, for each theme we included at least 3 example quotes. In the context of ongoing developments, we discuss results, which underscore the complexity of beleaguered subjects and render conversations about academic freedom and UAP timely, relevant, and necessary.