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On Thursday, February 8th, the Executive Committee of AAUP–Penn responded to yet another campaign of targeted harassment directed against a Penn colleague, Annenberg faculty member Dwayne Booth, with the aim of silencing and punishing him for protected extramural speech. We encourage all faculty to read and circulate this message. We also commend the many faculty members who have stood up to defend the principles of academic freedom and have resisted calls for the university to discipline Booth.

We note that we sent this letter five days ago to the President, Provost, General Counsel, Chair and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees, Chair of the Committee on Open Expression, Chair of the Faculty Senate, and Chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom.  We have received no response.

Interim President Larry Jameson
Provost John Jackson
Tulia Falleti, Chair, Faculty Senate
Raina Merchant, Chair, SCAFR
Wendy White, General Counsel
Lisa Bellini, Chair, Committee on Open Expression
Ramanan Raghavendran, Chair, Board of Trustees
Julie Beren Platt, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees

Dear Colleagues,

We write to express our concern about the targeted harassment of Annenberg faculty member Dwayne Booth, as well as Interim President Jameson’s dangerous and unwarranted response to it. Both constitute serious threats to academic freedom and to Penn’s own written policies.

The targeted harassment of Booth was instigated by the Washington Free Beacon, a publication known for political provocation whose activities conform to a well-known pattern: it singled out a faculty member who had criticized the war in Gaza and portrayed him as an antisemite, which predictably generated threats of personal violence against him and calls for the university to discipline him. In publishing the date of Booth’s next class, the newspaper endangered the physical safety of both Booth and his students.

Such harassment must be understood and publicly condemned as a threat to academic freedom, which includes the right of faculty to freedom in extramural speech—that is, speech made as a member of the public on issues of general concern. Penn’s Faculty Handbook, drawing on the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles, contains strong protections for extramural speech: “When speaking or writing as an individual, the teacher should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.” This policy applies equally to all faculty members, whether tenure-track or non-tenure track. By definition, extramural speech does not constitute grounds for discipline except in the extremely rare case where such speech demonstrates that a faculty member is unfit to do the teaching and research that their job entails. The only way to make that determination is through a careful, formal review of the colleague’s entire record by their fellow faculty members in accordance with AAUP principles and the Faculty Handbook.

The purpose of targeted harassment is to intimidate all faculty into silence and to goad universities into violating their own policies on academic freedom by condemning and disciplining faculty for protected speech. Administrators, to act in the best interest of their institutions, must resist all such pressure. The national AAUP’s position is clear: “The AAUP urges administrations, governing boards, and faculties, individually and collectively, to speak out clearly and forcefully to defend academic freedom and to condemn targeted harassment and intimidation of faculty members.”

Unfortunately, Interim President Jameson has endangered academic freedom by publicly condemning Booth’s political cartoons as “reprehensible” and suggesting that he should not have published them. Jameson’s public rebuke of a faculty member for protected extramural speech imperils the academic freedom of every faculty member at Penn, and it adds fuel to the fire started by those who are actively campaigning to damage our university’s reputation and to destabilize its basic academic functioning. It gives all of us reason to wonder whether the Interim President respects the university’s own written policies, and under what circumstances he might violate them outright.

To be clear: any attempt to discipline Booth for protected extramural speech, and any attempt to do so unilaterally—denying him due process—would constitute unambiguous violations of Penn’s Faculty Handbook and the principles of academic freedom. Such action would result in an investigation of the University of Pennsylvania by the national AAUP.

We share with you guidance for administrators from Faculty First Responders, a resource created with support from the national AAUP by scholars who have studied targeted harassment as one key element of organized attacks on higher education in recent years. As their guidance makes clear, it is dangerous and self-defeating for administrators to condemn faculty members who are subject to targeted harassment:

[R]ight-wing outlets are waging a culture war against higher education in general. They are not concerned with the specifics of what happens on your campus. In fact, they will be outraged whatever you do. And, likewise, they will soon forget about this story and move on to the next one. So will the online trolls, angry alumni, and others who, in the moment, might appear to be deeply concerned about this issue. Your faculty, staff, students, and community, however, will remember how you respond to these attacks for years to come. Therefore, a strong, public defense not only demonstrates true academic leadership but also likely earns the support and gratitude of the campus community.

The fundamental duty of the university administration in a time of war and political conflict is to protect academic freedom. That means reminding the university community and the wider public in clear, unequivocal terms that faculty members’ extramural speech is protected and that harassment will not be tolerated.

We are closely monitoring this case and reporting it to the national office of the AAUP.

Sincerely,
Executive Committee, AAUP-Penn

CC: Sarah Banet-Weiser, Dean, Annenberg School for Communication
Litty Paxton, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, Annenberg School for Communication
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director, Annenberg Public Policy Center

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December 12, 2023

Today, unelected trustees with no academic expertise are evidently attempting a hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the University of Pennsylvania—functions related to curriculum, research, and the hiring and evaluation of faculty. A letter circulated to trustees asks, “Should any of the existing academic departments be closed?” It seems to propose unilateral changes by trustees to “instruction of students,” changes in “criteria for qualification and admission for membership in the Faculty,” and a “Code of Conduct” to constrain campus speech. And it raises the possibility that the university might discipline faculty for “promoting a particular viewpoint.”  

The questions being considered by the trustees represent an assault on the principle of academic freedom, which was first articulated a century ago to safeguard the educational mission of universities.  Academic freedom ensures that professionally qualified researchers and educators, not donors or politicians, make decisions about curriculum and scholarship. It also ensures that the hiring, promotion, and discipline of faculty members are based on their fitness to do the work of research and teaching, and that fitness is determined by members of the academic profession.  These norms are necessary to ensure that the university can serve its fundamental purpose: to foster free and open inquiry that can produce knowledge for the public good in a democratic society.  They prevent institutions of higher education from being turned into instruments that serve private and political interests. Over the course of a century, these principles have been endorsed by over 250 scholarly and educational organizations and written into the faculty handbooks of universities nationwide, including Penn’s.

Unelected billionaires without scholarly qualifications are now seeking to control academic decisions that must remain within the purview of faculty in order for research and teaching to have legitimacy and autonomy from private and partisan interests. Any attempts on the part of Penn’s trustees to close academic departments, constrain hiring, discipline faculty members for political reasons and without due process, censor faculty’s intramural or extramural speech, or impose new McCarthyite speech codes on faculty and students would constitute the most flagrant violations imaginable of the core principles of academic freedom and faculty governance. Those principles are not negotiable.

The transparent purposes of the questions being considered by the trustees are to restrict legitimate, long-established areas of study, to silence and punish speech with which trustees disagree, and to turn back the clock on gains in diversity and equity.

The AAUP-Penn Executive Committee first sounded the alarm on such threats to academic freedom in October.  We issued the following recommendations, and we stand by them today.

  • It is likely that donors and administrators will attempt to respond to the present crisis by creating new academic programming—whether new hiring, curricular offerings, or research initiatives. Faculty must design and control any such effort rather than allow donors to set the terms.
  • When interacting with the university and its members, Penn’s trustees, alumni, and donors must be held to the same university policies that govern the rest of us, particularly policies prohibiting threats, coercion, retaliation, and intimidation. The statutes of the Board of Trustees and all university policies should be revised to reflect that expectation.
  • Those trustees and members of advisory boards who have made coercive threats against members of the university and academic programs within Penn have already violated the Guidelines on Open Expression, to which they are expressly bound. We recommend that they be removed from all university advisory and governance boards.

Trustees who neither understand nor respect the purpose of the university and who threaten its educational and research mission should not govern these institutions.

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December 9, 2023

In recent months, trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have repeatedly misrepresented the words and deeds of Penn faculty and students who have expressed concern for Palestinian civilians and criticized the war in Gaza, going so far as to suggest that faculty who have publicly condemned Hamas were Hamas supporters and that groups protesting genocide were calling for genocide. These distortions and attacks on our colleagues have not addressed the scourge of antisemitism—a real and grave problem. Instead, they have threatened the ability of faculty and students to research, teach, study, and publicly discuss the history, politics, and cultures of Israel and Palestine. These attacks strike at the heart of the mission of an educational institution: to foster open, critical, and rigorous research and teaching that can produce knowledge for the public good in a democratic society.

The ability of donors, lobbying groups, and members of Congress to destabilize the University of Pennsylvania reveals the need to restore a strong faculty voice in the governance of the institution. The next president must defend the principles of shared governance and academic freedom, which protect the educational mission of the university. And they must correct what has become a dangerous myth suggesting that the defense of academic freedom and open expression is in any way contradictory to the fight against antisemitism. We intend to see that Penn’s next president lives up to this responsibility.

For further information, please see past statements of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee:

  1. Statement on Threats to Academic Freedom, University Governance, and Safety at the University of Pennsylvania, October 28
  2. Letter on Targeted Harassment, November 20
  3. Urgent message regarding film screening and threats to academic freedom, November 28
  4. Message on the Dec. 5 Congressional hearing, Dec. 6
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December 6, 2023

Dear Members,

In recent weeks, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee has called on President Liz Magill to publicly condemn the targeted harassment of faculty members who have been subject to defamation and threats of personal violence for participating in the Palestine Writes Literature Festival and for expressing support for Palestinian civilians.  Campaigns of targeted harassment threaten core rights protected by academic freedom, including the rights of faculty to make academic decisions within their areas of expertise and to speak publicly on issues of general concern.  It is a fundamental duty of university administrators to condemn such attacks on academic freedom.

At yesterday’s Congressional hearings, some lawmakers contributed to the targeted harassment of faculty and subjected President Liz Magill to a line of questioning that revealed their contempt for academic freedom and for truth itself.  Unfortunately, in the face of their questions, President Magill failed once again to fulfill her responsibility to condemn targeted harassment.  During the hearing, Republican Congressmen Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Jim Banks (R-IN) breathed new life into a months-old campaign of targeted harassment by making false and inflammatory claims about individual Penn faculty members’ political views, affiliations, and activities.  They called on the University to commit flagrant violations of academic freedom: they suggested that Penn fire faculty members for protected extramural speech and challenged one faculty member’s right to teach classes and make curricular decisions within their area of scholarly expertise.  These were threats to the academic freedom of Penn faculty members made by members of Congress, broadcast live to international audiences and covered in major media outlets.  Such threats imperil the right of all faculty members to full freedom in research, teaching, and extramural speech.  At a time when the individual faculty members named by Congressmen Wilson and Banks have faced months of threats to their personal safety, often fueled by viral online misinformation, these comments also increase the serious risk of violence against members of our community.

President Magill failed to respond to these instances of targeted harassment that unfolded before her eyes.  While she was denied adequate time to respond, and while her testimony paid lip service to academic freedom, she did not challenge the Congressmen’s misleading claims about Penn faculty members. Nor did she challenge the legitimacy of the organized campaign of targeted harassment that has circulated these claims online and in the media for months.

Elsewhere in her testimony, President Magill accurately acknowledged “rising harassment, intimidation, doxing, and threats toward students, faculty, and staff based on their identity or perceived identity as Muslim, Palestinian, or Arab.” But she gave the inaccurate impression that the University has already taken effective action to address the problem of targeted harassment: “We are investigating all allegations, even when threats have come from outside our campus. We are providing resources and advice to assist individuals with online doxing, harassment, and threats. Safety and security for individuals and places of worship has been increased across the board, and we are deploying all necessary resources to support any member of our community who is the target of hate.”

In fact, as AAUP-Penn has documented, university policies have exhibited a pattern of discrimination against faculty and students—including Jewish members of our community—who have articulated criticisms of Israeli government policies or of the current war.  While offering free, enhanced security to some Jewish institutions, faculty, and students on campus, the university administration has failed to defend the safety and academic freedom of faculty and students who have voiced concern for Palestinian civilians.  These include Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim members of our community, Jewish students in Penn Chavurah, and faculty from other religious, national, and ethnic backgrounds.

As yesterday’s hearing made clear, the same groups outside the University that are threatening faculty members are attacking President Magill.  For the sake of the academic mission of our university, and for her own sake, she must refute their claims rather than accept their dangerous misrepresentations.  As the AAUP has explained, the attempts we are seeing at Penn and in Congress to conflate all research and teaching about Palestine and all criticism of Israeli government policies and warfare with antisemitism represent a direct threat to academic freedom.  They are designed not to fight antisemitism—a real and grave problem—but to suppress research and teaching on the histories, politics, and cultures of Israel and Palestine.  These are not only legitimate areas of scholarly inquiry; they are precisely the kinds of areas where searching, critical, and rigorous scholarly inquiry is needed to serve the public good in a democratic society.

President Magill has spent the last several months fruitlessly attempting to placate donors, trustees, members of Congress, and lobbying organizations that neither understand nor respect the principles of academic freedom—principles that the AAUP set out a century ago to safeguard the academic mission of the university.  President Magill has recapitulated their dangerous conflations of antisemitism with an overly broad range of academic programming and political speech and has tolerated and even contributed to the targeted harassment of faculty.  In doing so, she has not protected herself from criticism, but has emboldened attacks on faculty members, on academic freedom, and on the basic academic functioning of the University of Pennsylvania.  Yesterday’s Congressional hearing provided the clearest evidence yet that President Magill has committed a grave error in casting her lot with those who have threatened and humiliated her in order to instrumentalize her in a campaign against scholarship and teaching.  It is past time for the president of our university to stand up to these attacks by supporting in word and deed Penn’s faculty, the principles of academic freedom, and the fundamental scholarly mission of the university.

— AAUP-Penn Executive Committee

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The policies of the University of Pennsylvania protect academic freedom, which is essential to the research and teaching mission of universities and to students’ freedom in learning. The concept of academic freedom was first articulated during the early twentieth century by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and its canonical definition is found in the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles and 1970 Interpretive Comments. This statement has been endorsed by over 250 scholarly and educational organizations in the United States, and its principles are written into faculty handbooks nationwide, including Penn’s.

The principles of academic freedom were established to protect the integrity of research and teaching from interference by donors, trustees, politicians, and others who might seek to make universities serve private and political interests. They are founded on the idea that a university’s purpose is to generate new knowledge that can serve the common good in a democratic society, and that generating new knowledge requires free and open inquiry. To safeguard the university’s public mission, academic freedom entails the following rights for all faculty members—whether tenure-track or non-tenure track, and including graduate research and teaching assistants—and for students:

  • The right of faculty members to full freedom in research and teaching. This means that decisions about research and curricular matters are the province of faculty, who are hired on the basis of their professional qualifications in those areas. It also means that decisions about the hiring, promotion, and discipline of faculty members are to be made on the basis of their fitness to do the work of research and teaching, and determinations of fitness are made through formal, careful reviews by faculty members with the scholarly training to make informed evaluations. Academic decisions do not belong to trustees, donors, administrators, politicians, or others who lack academic expertise.

    Faculty members’ rights to freedom in research and teaching are not individual rights to say whatever one pleases in publications or in the classroom: a historian of Europe who espouses Holocaust denial or a biologist who teaches intelligent design is not protected by academic freedom because the academic profession in those fields has rejected those ideas as groundless and intellectually indefensible.  The rights to freedom in research and teaching are best understood as collective rights of the academic profession to determine the fitness of scholars to do the work of research and teaching within their areas of expertise, and they protect scholars who meet that standard from inappropriate pressure that would constrain free and open inquiry.

    Freedom in research and teaching is not a guild privilege: it is essential to students’ right to freedom in learning. It ensures that students take courses designed by qualified researchers and educators, not by donors, trustees, administrators, politicians, or others acting on the basis of non-academic preferences.

  • The right of faculty members to freedom in extramural speech—that is, speech on issues of general concern made as a member of the public. This right is necessary to protect freedom in research and teaching, as it prevents “pretextual” discipline—that is, cases in which trustees or administrators target a faculty member because they disagree with the substance of their scholarship, but rather than say so, they find a controversial statement that the professor has made in public and use that as the basis of discipline. This right protects speech made as a member of the public both within and beyond a faculty member’s area of expertise. According to the principles of academic freedom, extramural speech is not in itself grounds for discipline except in the rare case that it demonstrates unfitness to do the work of research and teaching. Such a determination must be made through a formal, careful review of evidence by faculty members.
  • The right of faculty members to freedom in intramural speech—that is, speech about the university itself that professors make as members of the institution. Faculty members have the right and responsibility to participate in the governance of their universities, and this right protects their ability to do so.  It establishes that faculty may not be disciplined for criticizing the university, as such threats of discipline would make it impossible for faculty to have a meaningful, independent institutional voice.
  • The right of students to freedom in learning. Codified in the AAUP’s 1967 Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, this protects students’ freedom of expression and association, including the freedom to engage in political activity, all of which are essential aspects of learning and education. It also establishes that students are entitled to freedom of inquiry in the classroom. Finally, it stipulates that faculty do not evaluate students on the basis of their own or their students’ political views or activities. That ensures that faculty members and students can participate in public and political life without their speech threatening students’ freedom in learning.

These rights did not originate in the Constitution or in legislation, and they are not self-enforcing. Academic freedom is only as strong as the institutions, procedures, and professional norms that faculty members established over the last century to protect it:

  • Faculty governance institutions. Faculty across the United States incorporated AAUP principles into faculty handbooks, and they created Faculty Senates and faculty unions to enforce these policies.
  • Due process.  Written into Faculty Handbooks and union contracts, due process procedures protect all faculty members from unjust discipline or termination by requiring formal processes of review and appeal.
  • Tenure. The institution of tenure was created in order to protect academic freedom, on the understanding that job insecurity is the greatest threat to freedom in research and teaching.
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The AAUP–Penn Executive Committee issued the following message (also linked here as a PDF) today, November 28:

Dear Members,

The AAUP-Penn Executive Committee is deeply concerned to learn that the Penn administration has refused to allow a Jewish student organization, Penn Chavurah, to reserve a room this semester to screen Israelism, a documentary film about young Jewish Americans who have traveled to Israel and Palestine and developed critical perspectives on Israeli government policies. The administration’s refusal to allow students to screen a documentary film on campus is one more expression of our university leadership’s failure to uphold the principles of academic freedom—principles enshrined in Penn’s policies and essential to the mission of a university. Academic freedom entails the freedom of students to learn, and to encounter and critically examine multiple interpretations of the world. Students’ freedom to learn also entails their right to political speech and association, which are essential aspects of education and learning. In denying students these freedoms, the university administration violates its own policies and endangers the principles of academic freedom that are essential to the research and teaching mission of a university.

The Executive Committee commends our colleagues at the Middle East Center for reserving a room for the film screening, which as of now will take place tonight, November 28 at 6:30 p.m. in Meyerson Hall Room B1. We encourage all faculty members to attend to demonstrate their support for academic freedom. Should the screening site be moved, we will do our best to notify members. 

We are also gravely concerned by reports that administrators have allegedly told the Middle East Center to cancel the screening, and have allegedly informed Penn Chavurah that the group might lose its status or funding if tonight’s screening occurs. 

We are alarmed to learn that in response to this inappropriate pressure from administrators, the director of the Middle East Center submitted his resignation today. His resignation underlines the gravity of the crisis, and the responsibility the President and Provost have for creating and exacerbating it.  

We condemn in the strongest possible terms any pressure by administrators, donors, and trustees to prevent the Middle East Center from reserving a room to screen a documentary film that falls squarely within the Center’s area of expertise. It is the right of faculty members to make academic programming decisions.  We are particularly concerned that the Middle East Center has already lost its federal funding because the university failed to provide adequate support for its activities. Any further threats to the Center’s ability to fulfill its academic mission will only hurt our university, our faculty, and our students.

We have reported these concerns about academic freedom to the national office of the AAUP. We encourage departments, programs, and the Faculty Senate to speak out against this effort to suppress academic freedom.

— AAUP-Penn Executive Committee

AAUP-Penn Nov 28 Message on MEC Film Screening and Further Threats to Academic Freedom

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AAUP–Penn chapter President Amy Offner and Vice President Emily Steinlight contributed a guest column to the Daily Pennsylvanian, published on August 31 during the first week of classes, calling on faculty not to allow themselves to be used in Penn’s anti-union campaigns against student workers in GET-UP and United RAs at Penn. You can read our op-ed here.

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This spring, we have been inspired by the growth of union organizing at Penn. Resident advisors who work in the dorms filed for a union election in March; graduate research assistants and teaching assistants in GET-UP went public with their organizing drive in April; and residents at Penn Medicine won their union election in May. Meanwhile, Penn Museum Workers United is pushing ahead with their campaign to win a first contract.

The university administration has launched anti-union campaigns in response to all these mobilizations and is now trying to enlist faculty in anti-union activity.  Just last week, all standing faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences received an email from administrators directing us to websites that present anti-union talking points for us to pass along to graduate student workers.  It is wrong for the administration to attempt to make us conduits for anti-union messages. Moreover, it is wrong for the administration to run anti-union campaigns at all.

Our Response

This week we delivered a letter to administrators calling on them to take down all anti-union websites and end the anti-union campaigns. We hope you’ll read and share it.

Together over the next several months, we will work to educate colleagues about anti-union campaigns to make sure that we do not pass along anti-union messages. As many of us know, anti-union campaigns can be subtle: employers present their communications as purportedly neutral answers to frequently asked questions.  As a result, even faculty who support unions might not immediately recognize these websites for what they are.  

To educate ourselves and our colleagues, we have created an annotated version of the Provost’s guidance to faculty. Please read it, share it with colleagues, and stay tuned for upcoming information sessions and opportunities to get involved. 

Letter-on-Antiunion-Campaigns-1Download
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