UNC System Considers Academic Freedom Updates

Most changes are fine, one big red flag

Note: this essay does not represent the views of Duke university, but are my views offered under academic freedom. For full information purposes, I have three degrees from UNC Chapel Hill (1990, 92, 95).

***********************************

The University of North Carolina system Board of Governors (BOG) is considering more clearly defining academic freedom (see p. 11 for proposed revisions) for the 17 constituent campuses Korie Dean writes in the Assembly.

The proposed changes have been subjected to shared governance discussions (good on process), and the actual clarifications are mostly fine if you begin from a place of assuming good faith of all parties. However, recent actions of the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees (campus specific) are why some faculty are reasonably skeptical of good faith in the area of academic freedom, which is adjacent to, but not the same as tenure.

For example, the UNC-CH Board of Trustees and then-Provost Chris Clemens had a dispute last Spring when normally pro forma approvals of vetted tenure cases by the BOT got held up due to Tenure policy views of some Trustees. Trustees rightly have policy views, that is the point of such boards, but they should discuss them in the proper and open forum. Instead of doing so, tenure cases that had been vetted by the faculty system on the UNC-CH campus were held up under the guise of personnel discussions to shield policy discussions from sunshine laws. (Summary of tenure process: arms length letter writers from other universities; faculty committee reading the record; committee recommendation and department vote; chair assessment, Dean assessment and finally a campus-wide Appointments, Promotions and Tenure committee of faculty form across the campus making a recommendation to the Provost, who then makes one to the Trustees). Whew. It is a long and difficult process, and 33 cases that had made it through the system should not have been delayed by a policy discussion. This is the backdrop that has understandably produced the climate of UNC faculty doubting good faith.

A Provision That Could De-Fang Academic Freedom

The current Definition of Academic Freedom in the UNC BOG bylaws is two paragraphs. The proposed modifications keep the original paragraphs, while adding six more sections, roughly quadrupling the word count. The new text:

• more clearly defines academic freedom (section 2)

• expands upon the rights and responsibilities of the faculty inherent in academic freedom (section 3)

• notes that academic freedom is not absolute (section 4)

• enumerates what “parameters of academic freedom” include (section 5)

• states what “parameters of academic freedom” do not include (section 6)

Section (6) of the proposed policy contains the most problematic aspect of the expanded text based on my review. Section (6) The Parameters of Academic Freedom Do Not Include is below (page 12):

a. Teaching content clearly unrelated to the course description or unrelated to the discipline or subject matter. b. Using university resources for political or ideological advocacy in violation of university policy. (1)c. Refusing to comply with institutional policies or accreditation standards to which the university is subject

I very much concur with the content of points a and b above. However, c. is potentially problematic.

“Refusing to comply with institutional policies or accreditation standards to which the university is subject” provides the opportunity for a constituent institution to develop a policy that makes academic freedom toothless in a chosen area. For example, a policy like “you cannot talk about slavery” or “you cannot assign a reading that is critical of the U.S.” or “fill in the blank of whatever is controversial in the future” could practically be banned while claiming to protect academic freedom.

Perhaps most importantly, I think that section (6) is redundant and not needed at all. The point that academic freedom is not absolute and that it must be exercised within the rules and norms of the institution has already been stated in section (4).

(4) Academic freedom is not absolute. Faculty have the responsibility to exercise academic freedom within the parameters established by academic disciplines, professions, and in compliance with institutional policies, regulations, and rules.

This item does a fairly comprehensive job of rightly saying that academic freedom is not a license to do whatever the faculty want, but that we are a part of our discipline, the faculty and our university employer, and are thus subject to the rules and regulations of our workplace.

Section (6) is at a minimum repetitive with section (4), and I fear that it could be used to truncate the practical meaning of academic freedom via an institutional policy that limits controversial topics as described earlier. Further, the second clause of (6)c “or accreditation standards to which the university is subject” is another route to potentially de-fanging academic freedom down the road given that UNC is in the process of developing a new accreditation agency with other State University systems like Texas and Florida. This means accreditation rules against teaching a controversial subject, for example, could be a route to keep academic freedom intact in name only, while greatly degrading its meaning.

Students and Faculty Cannot Have the Same Academic Freedom Protection

A further matter that might be viewed as a quibble, but that is nevertheless important is the source of the protections that faculty and students enjoy. It makes no sense that a student (learner) can be protected by the same academic freedom as the faculty member (domain expert). Academic freedom is part of an employment contract that is based on expertise and granted to the faculty member. Students cannot have the same protection.

The items of protection that are listed for students are fine, especially under (2). Sub items a., b., c., are all good clarifications and good pedagogy, even if I might wordsmith them a bit differently, but of course a professor would want the last edit. However, I don’t think the principle securing these important student freedoms is “Academic Freedom.“ It is more like “Freedom of Learning” which is a phrase used in the joint AAU/AAUP joint statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1940. It is true that the Kalven Report (1967) named the faculty and students “the critics of society” in equal position to responding to “political and social issues”, while the corporate university was the “home” of the critics. This is not the primary work of the faculty, however. This conflation of faculty and students as legitimately speaking out while the corporate university should remain cautious in one type of speech (today often called institutional neutrality) has leaked into what I consider sloppy muddling of what academic freedom is and who has it.