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This morning, on April 27th, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee sent the following urgent message to Interim President Jameson, Provost Jackson, and Senior Executive Vice President Carnaroli in response to last night’s message threatening to shut down the student antiwar protest on College Green:

April 27, 2024

Dear President Jameson, Provost Jackson, and Senior Executive Vice President Carnaroli,

We are deeply disturbed by the email you sent last night, which demands that peaceful protesters leave College Green on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations, including claims that their encampment threatens the safety of others. These allegations have been disputed to us by faculty and students who have attended and observed the demonstration. Your statement mischaracterizes the overall nature of an antiwar protest that necessarily involves strong emotions on both sides but has not, to our knowledge, involved any actual violence or threats of violence to individuals on our campus. To the contrary, those involved in the demonstration have worked to maintain a nonviolent space of discussion, debate, and even disagreement, in the spirit of an educational environment. Moreover, we have received reports of potential harassment and intimidating conduct directed at the peaceful protesters themselves, creating the concerning impression that complaints of harassment are being evaluated and policies applied in a discriminatory manner—a potential violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Penn’s administration has already been accused of establishing a pattern of discriminatory behavior in its public statements as well as its actions this year. For instance, in futile attempts to appease donors, lobbying organizations, and politicians who would like to control what can be taught, studied, and publicly discussed in the United States, you have restricted a Jewish student group’s ability to screen a film critical of the state of Israel; you have banned the student group Penn against the Occupation; you have failed to show adequate concern for the harassment of Palestinian, Muslim, Iranian, and Arab students and faculty; and you have issued public statements that have contributed to that harassment. This pattern must not continue. We urge you not to use disputed claims and partial depictions as justifications for a crackdown on peaceful protesters. 

We are further concerned by your claim that the encampment violates unnamed facilities policies. On the one hand, as a demonstration under the Guidelines on Open Expression, the encampment is not an event requiring a facilities permit at all. On the other hand, you may be implying that the encampment violates some other facilities policy—which one, we cannot know and cannot evaluate while your implicit threat to clear the encampment within 24 hours looms. What we do know is that during this academic year, Penn’s central administration, like university administrations nationwide, has turned to silencing speech critical of the war in Gaza through discriminatory enforcement of mundane and petty rules; in one highly publicized case on our campus, the Vice Provost for University Life reported a student to CSA for allegedly posting stickers about the Palestine Freedom School, claiming that this was a violation of the Code of Student Conduct. As all of us know, students routinely post stickers on our campus about all manner of subjects without being hauled into disciplinary proceedings, and in prior cases when students have been penalized for stickering, they have been fined $1, not accused of serious violations of the Student Code of Conduct. This pattern of discriminatory rule enforcement, in every instance targeting speech critical of the war in Gaza, is itself a violation of Penn’s Guidelines on Open Expression, which prohibit the University from restricting assembly and demonstration on the basis of the substantive content of the views expressed. And it raises further questions about Penn’s adherence to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

You say you “have closely monitored the protest.” We write to inform you that we are closely monitoring your actions. Penn has the opportunity to set a different example from the university administrations at Columbia, NYU, Emory, the University of Texas Austin, Indiana University, Ohio State, and other institutions that have committed grievous violations of open expression and academic freedom, and unleashed shocking police violence against students and faculty. On Thursday when the demonstration began, we were pleased to see Penn avoid unnecessary escalation and respect the rights of members of our community to participate in peaceful protest. We urge you to maintain that commitment to open expression. Do not escalate the situation. Do not violate the rights of students and faculty. Remember that the actions you choose to take today will be your legacy. 

Peaceful protest has a long and proud history at our university. We expect to see it respected in the present. 

Sincerely,

AAUP-Penn Executive Committee

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On April 23, in response to university administrators’ deployment of repressive force against students and faculty engaged in peaceful protests at Columbia, NYU, and several other campuses, as well as the infringement of the associational rights of student groups at many universities including our own, the Executive Committee of AAUP–Penn released the following public statement to Penn’s central administration and to media contacts as well as to our chapter’s membership:

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Statement by AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Repression of Student and Faculty Dissent
April 23, 2024

We condemn in the strongest terms the wave of recent repression of students and faculty engaged in peaceful and principled protest by university administrations across the country. These include the draconian treatment of students by the administrations of Barnard and Columbia, aided by the NYPD whom administrators called to campus for the first time since 1968, expressly without the consent of the Columbia University Senate and thus in direct violation of shared governance. They also include copycat crackdowns on peaceful protesters at Yale University and at NYU, both of which authorized police to assault and arrest their own faculty and students—reportedly including the pepper spraying of legal observers and student journalists. These crackdowns extend and intensify the capricious and one-sided suppression of dissent at Penn this year, most recently seen in the unjustified ban of the student group Penn Against the Occupation. The sheer volume of administrative actions in violation of university statutes, shared governance, and faculty and student rights is too large to catalog in this statement, which itself reveals the perilous environment university administrations have created on our campuses. Notably, these administrations have repeatedly and consistently shown themselves to be biased in their selective suppression of students and faculty critical of Israel’s war on Palestinians, often apparently at the behest of right-wing donors, politicians, alumni, and lobbying groups. They purport to be concerned about the safety of Jewish students while actively suppressing the rights of Jewish students and faculty who express their own criticism of the current war on Gaza, and conflating antisemitism with all criticism of the State of Israel, which makes no one safer. Meanwhile, they show utter disdain for the safety and rights of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Persian, and other students and faculty offering the same criticism. As a result, with few notable exceptions, university administrators’ accounts of their actions can no longer be trusted, and their statements affirming an ostensible commitment to student safety—made while threatening or deliberately unleashing police violence on their own peaceably assembled students and faculty—have lost all credibility.

We echo our colleagues in AAUP-Columbia, AAUP-Barnard, and NYU-AAUP in demanding that all suspensions of their students be dismissed, all charges against their students be dropped and their records cleared, and the rights of faculty and students to peacefully protest be restored immediately and respected going forward. We are watching, in particular, to make sure that non-tenure-track and untenured faculty, students and faculty of color, and LGBTQ+ faculty and students—who are a significant number of those arrested and charged—do not face retaliatory actions from these universities. We demand the same of Penn’s administration, and call specifically for Penn Against the Occupation to be reinstated, and we call for the administration to cease its abuse of the student disciplinary system to silence and punish legitimate forms of speech, protest, and assembly. Our university administration must end its campaign of one-sided suppression of political dissent, which discredits the entire institution’s commitment to academic freedom, open expression, free inquiry, and freedom of association. We further demand that disciplinary procedures against students at Penn and at campuses across the country be reviewed and revised by faculty and students, not administrators, to protect the freedoms and due process rights of all. Finally, we demand that all universities cease the abhorrent practice of turning armed police on peaceful demonstrators. 

While in the immediate term university administrators might seem to have demonstrated their own power, the draconian nature of their actions reveals the weakness of their position. We are confident that students, faculty, and staff who ally together in peaceful dissent against injustice will carry the day. The Executive Committee of AAUP-Penn stands with our colleagues, students, and allies in our national AAUP and at Columbia, Barnard, Yale, NYU, the University of Michigan, Pomona College, Stony Brook University, the City University of New York, Vanderbilt University, the University of Minnesota, Cal Poly Humboldt, and beyond, and we commit ourselves to a more just future for all.

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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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On January 22, 2024, Penn faculty, students, graduate workers, staff, and allies from across campus, across local higher ed unions, and across Philly stood out in the cold together to rally for the basic principles that make a university a university: academic freedom, shared institutional governance that represents us all, open expression, and equity and diversity, all of which enable higher education to serve the purpose of generating new knowledge for the public good. “Universities don’t exist to serve private interests,” as AAUP–Penn President Amy Offner said in her opening remarks; “They are not tools for the business interests or political agendas of donors and trustees.’”

The lineup of speakers—including tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty from many departments and schools across Penn from Arts & Sciences to SP2 and from Wharton to Veterinary Medicine, as well as undergraduate students, medical students, grad workers in GET-UP, and colleagues and allies from other universities—spoke out powerfully in support of academic freedom and shared governance, open expression, and diversity and equity, all of which are under assault across the U.S. and at our own university.

Without academic freedom, higher education is impossible. This right—a right defined by the American Association of University Professors from its founding in 1915 and won through past mobilizations by faculty across higher education—has long been enshrined in Penn’s policies, but it is not self-enforcing. That is why so many members of the Penn community have committed to standing together in solidarity to insist that the freedom to teach is essential to the freedom to learn, and to claim academic freedom and practice it as a collective right.

Yesterday’s public demonstration marked the start of a campaign by faculty across the University of Pennsylvania not just to beat back the current assault by billionaire CEOs, trustees, and politicians, but to fight for and win positive institutional changes that will strengthen academic freedom and the forms of job security meant to protect it and that will democratize our university’s governing structures in order to make the freedom to teach and learn a reality for all of us who study and teach at Penn.

You can read press coverage from the DP here and from the Philadelphia Inquirer here.

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AAUP–Penn is organizing a public demonstration on Monday, January 22 at 2pm in support of freedom to learn, teach, and study; shared institutional governance; and diversity and racial justice. We are calling on faculty, staff, students, workers, and allies from across Penn, across institutions, and across Philly to stand together to defend and strengthen these principles.

This is a crucial time to push back against billionaires and politicians who are threatening all of us who work and study at Penn. You have undoubtedly seen that Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management and co-chair of the Wharton Board of Governors, has circulated a memo suggesting that unelected Penn trustees assume powers to unilaterally close departments, impose McCarthyite speech codes clearly aimed at suppressing protest, and change hiring and admissions policies to turn back the clock on gains in diversity and racial justice. These are serious threats to our institution’s educational and research mission and to the work that all of us do.

Now is not a moment to stand on the sidelines. Your participation is vital in demonstrating that the majority of Penn faculty, students, and staff believe in academic freedom, shared governance, open expression, and diversity. So come out to the button (in front of Van Pelt) on Jan. 22 at 2pm to say loud and clear that we will not let CEOs and politicians destroy these principles, and we intend to win positive institutional changes strengthening them.



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Penn colleagues and students, please mark your calendars for a January 19 Open Forum on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance, featuring remarks from invited guest speakers Joan Wallach Scott and Hank Reichman—former chairs of AAUP’s national Committee A on Academic Freedom. This will be an opportunity to learn more about academic freedom and shared governance—principles that AAUP defined over a century ago and that are written into Penn’s Faculty Handbook—and to discuss together how we can strengthen them at Penn.

Join via zoom on 1/19 at 1pm; email for the meeting link if you haven’t received an invitation. Sign language interpretation will be available throughout the session.

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Take action and spread the word:

Penn is currently applying for reaccreditation—and to be accredited, universities must demonstrate adherence to principles of academic freedom, freedom of expression, faculty governance, and diversity. The recent actions of unelected trustees and donors have put the University’s accreditation at serious risk. A letter circulated among the trustees by a private equity billionaire suggests that they might unilaterally close departments, change hiring criteria (with the aim of destroying diversity and equity initiatives), and impose a speech code to discipline students and faculty for political expression. Attempts by donors and trustees with no academic qualifications to control curriculum and research, silence speech that they disagree with, shutter departments, interfere in faculty hiring, and end DEI policies are an assault on higher education, and they clearly threaten Penn’s accreditation.

The accreditation process gives us an opportunity to act. 

We are calling on all colleagues, allies across higher education, and concerned members of the public to participate in the comment period between now and January 12.

Allies beyond Penn and members of the public who want to defend students’ right to learn and preserve the university’s educational mission: Submit a Third-Party Comment to the accrediting agency (MSCHE) to express your concerns; see below for a sample message. Comments are due January 12, 2024.

Penn faculty, staff, and students: Write to Penn’s Self-Study Steering Committee, which is charged with writing a report to the external accrediting agency.  Comments are due by January 12, 2024:

  • Urge them to tell the truth in their report to the accrediting agency (MSCHE): academic freedom, shared governance, open expression, and DEI policies are gravely endangered at Penn and must be strengthened. The accreditation process is an instrument of accountability: we must use it. (The current draft of the report does not contain a single mention of “academic freedom.”)
  • See below for a sample message.

Please share this call widely with all those who care about the future of higher education. We ask everyone—faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the public—to submit comments and sound the alarm:

Penn must uphold the principles of academic freedom and shared governance in order to retain its accreditation, and to remain a university in anything more than name.

Below is a sample message you can use when you submit your comment:

Sample message on accreditation:

I write to express my grave concern that Penn’s accreditation is threatened by donors, trustees, and administrators who are attempting to undermine academic freedom, shared governance, open expression, and DEI policies at the university.

Penn’s self-study must tell the truth about the crisis at our university: academic freedom, shared governance, and open expression have already been compromised, and Apollo CEO Marc Rowan’s recent questions to the Penn trustees raise the specter of their total destruction.  To preserve the educational and research mission of the university, we must use the reaccreditation process as intended: it must be an instrument of accountability.

Penn’s self-study must clearly state that the following principles and standards required by Penn’s accrediting agency, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, are gravely endangered at the university today:

  • “academic freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom of expression”
  • “fair and impartial practices in the hiring, evaluation, promotion, discipline, and separation of employees”
  • “student learning experiences that are designed, delivered, and assessed by faculty”
  • “a general education program that…offers a sufficient scope to draw students into new areas of intellectual experience, expanding their cultural and global awareness and cultural sensitivity”
  • “graduate…opportunities for the development of research, scholarship, and independent thinking, provided by faculty and/or other professionals with credentials appropriate to graduate-level curricula”
  • “a climate that fosters respect among students, faculty, staff, and administration from a range of diverse backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives”
  • “a clearly articulated and transparent governance structure that outlines roles, responsibilities, and accountability for decision making by each constituency, including governing body, administration, faculty, staff and students”

The AAUP-Penn Executive Committee, as well as national news outlets, have documented numerous threats to these principles and standards. To name just a few:

The accreditation process presents us with an opportunity to defend and strengthen the principles of academic freedom, faculty governance, open expression, and diversity and equity.  It presents us with an opportunity to stand up to the threats of donors who neither understand nor respect the educational and research mission of the university.  We must use this opportunity to ensure a strong faculty voice in the governance of the university, protect the integrity of research and teaching, and safeguard policies that promote diversity and equity.

Sincerely,

X

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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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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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