Academic freedom is at the heart of a longstanding dispute between Louisiana College and four of its professors. The professors first sued the Christian liberal-arts college in 1995, accusing officials there of spreading rumors about them (The Chronicle, December 13, 1996). The college’s Board of Trustees later issued a written apology to the professors (The Chronicle, March 27, 1998).

The professors, however, are now renewing that lawsuit, according to an article in The Town Talk, a local newspaper. They say the administration has, in essence, banned books they seek to assign to their students. One example is M. Scott Peck’s best-selling The Road Less Traveled, a self-help book and personal meditation that argues, among other things, that “our unconscious is God.”

In recent years, the college got in trouble with its regional accreditor over a textbook-review policy that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools regarded as a violation of academic freedom (The Chronicle, December 4, 2003). But the college rescinded the policy after the accreditor put it on probation (The Chronicle, March 17, 2005).