AAUP Announces the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom and Call for Papers--“Academic Freedom on the Managed Campus"

This from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP):

We are pleased to announce the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. The journal features recent scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to contemporary crises of austerity, shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. This year's contributors draw connections between the multiple frequencies of bullying present on our campuses and the principles and practice of academic freedom and shared governance.

The volume’s eleven essays address a wide range of topics, including the use of discourses of civility and student evaluations of teaching to bully faculty, threats from on and off campus to the academic freedom of faculty of color, and the troubling legacies of historical infringements on academic freedom and shared governance. Follow the links to each article in the table of contents below or access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/JAF10.

We are also excited to share a new call for papers, “Academic Freedom on the Managed Campus," for the eleventh volume of the journal, scheduled for publication in September 2020.
—Rachel Ida Buff, Faculty Editor

The Journal of Academic Freedom is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.

The table of Contents with links follows below.

From the AAUP: Resources Against Targeted Online Harassment

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently considered the wave of activity touching on the social media and online interactions of faculty with other stakeholders both within the public sphere and in the university itself. 

Over the last year, targeted online harassment of faculty has emerged as a significant threat to academic freedom. Fueled by websites such as Professor Watchlist, Campus Reform, and College Fix, campaigns of threats and harassment are directed against faculty members for what they are reported to have said in the classroom or posted on social media. (here)

AAUP has developed materials that speak to this targeting of faculty by those who may disagree with faculty views,writings or other work.   To that end it has developed an online Case Letters from the AAUP:A look at four of the recent harassment cases where the AAUP has intervened to protect academic freedom.

This post includes links to AAUP resources for faculty who believe they may be the target of harassment set out in a press release from the AAUP, which follows.  Also below the AAUP's one page "What You Can Do About Online Targeted Harassment." The AAUP is also interested especially in assaults against faculty on the cntemporary political left.  Its latest edition of Academe includes several articles that provide useful insights whatever the political source of attack.

Word Violence and the Weaponization of Narrative-A view From Cuba on the Violernce of Words and the Control of Narrative; Thoughts on "Ni 'gusanos' ni disidentes: respuesta a una publicación católica cubana"

(Pix credit: By Michael Linnenbach - first upload in de wikipedia on 09:58, 16. Feb 2005 by Michael Linnenbach, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105418)

Americans have their foibles; especially those that emerge from out of the Academy.  But this is not one of them.  I am speaking of the eruption (again) of national discussion about the use of words and their presentation before audiences (willing or not)--the encouragement of free speech and the suppression of words and speakers in the name of the protection of the innocent from the violence of words.

As I have noted elsewhere, it is not words that are at the center of the controversy--it is the narratives to which these words may be deployed ("The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education,"). This becomes clearer when one stops for a moment indulging a hyper focus on the national discussion within a peculiar segment of American society and considers the issue in a different national and political context.

This short essay considers the current battles over the control of the narratives to which words are deploys, suppressed and managed--but from the context of Cuba, a nation where one might take state control of those battles for granted but within which even there, the state appears merely as one of several actors  in the battle for control of the way orthodoxy is constructed and protected through the deployment of words. My purpose here is neither to take a position on the opinions of others (on every side of this issue here and elsewhere) but merely to note the difficulty of speaking to these issues outside of politics. Perhaps there is no "higher law" of free speech--there is merely the recognition that the ideology of speech is itself an expression of the orthodoxies that ideology is meant to protect.

An additionla  POSTSCRIPT, a March 2018 letter from Jaime Leygonier directed to the Father Superior of the Jesuit Order in Cuba on the same themee  (Carta 2da. a Superior Jesuitas de Cuba: Sancione subordinado libelista según Derecho Canónico)

Call for Papers: AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom Fall 2018

I am happy to pass along a Call for Papers issued by the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. The Call for Papers with links follows.The Journal seeks "original, scholarly articles exploring current mobilizations of the term free speech and their connections to existing practices and concepts of constitutionally protected speech and academic freedom."

From the AAUP: academic freedom and tenure investigative reports, a report on the independence of student media, updated policy statements on collective bargaining and collegiality

The Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors is published annually as the July–August issue of Academe. This year's Bulletin features academic freedom and tenure investigative reports, a report on the independence of student media, updated policy statements on collective bargaining and collegiality, and annual reports and other business documents.

 

Links follow.

 

"Insulting or Defaming Religion" and the University--A Story of Christus Ranae

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

One of the more interesting trends in the management by universities of the spaces within which discourse and engagement is supposed to occur, are issues revolving around religion.  That management, of course, is always subject to whatever is fashionable among the managerial classes at the university and those they serve.  Yet universities also serve, when it suits, the ideals they are constantly invoking in their efforts to compete effectively in the market for student (as input commodities to generate revenue) and output markets (enterprises willing to hire the commodities produced. In the U.K. many universities appear to have moved the line of management from expression to the protection not just of sensibilities but of the integrity of the belief systems of religious institutions themselves. (See, e.g., here "London South Bank University's Code of Practice for Freedom of Speech, which warns students that one definition of an 'unlawful meeting' is one "at which there is a likelihood that the speaker(s) may… commit blasphemy"").  How might that be approached in the United States (e.g., here and here)?

This post provides a brief discussion that frames the issue and an example of the sort of mundane events that may trigger more profound discussion.

The AAUP Report on the Salaita Affair--Speech Rights or a Contest Over the Faculty Appointment Power Within Universities?

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

I have been considering social media policies (See here, here, here, here, and here).  I have also been considering what may be a hard case--the way in which social media interventions contributed to the actions taken in connection with Professor Salaita's appointment at the University of Illinois (see here) especially in the context both civility (Here) and academic freedom (e.g., Here and Here). 

Today the AAUP announced the release of the report of its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that investigated the case of Steven Salaita:  AAUP, Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (April 2015).  The Report is a prelude to possible censure of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign by the AAUP.

The facts around the appointment of Professor Salaita remains quite controversial. In reporting on the AAUP action, Colleen Flaherty noted (Censure Threat, Inside Higher Education, April 28, 2015):

There’s been no shortage of criticism, both formal and informal, of how the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign handled the withdrawn faculty appointment of Steven Salaita last summer. (The university has a substantial number of supporters who say it was right to reject Salaita for the tone of his anti-Israel remarks on Twitter, but detractors have been numerous and vocal.)

The Report of the AAUP's Committee A appears to support Professor Salaita's position more positively than an earlier report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign subcommittee “Report on the Investigation into the Matter of Steven Salaita” (see full PDF here). That Report had earlier been rejected by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees (Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (April 2015, pp. 8-9).  However, the AAUP decision was not unanimous.

Cary Nelson, a professor of English at Urbana-Champaign who has defended the university’s right to consider matters of civility in hiring decisions, sits on Committee A and said he disagrees with a number of the report's conclusions. Nelson said he thought that the investigation on which the report was based failed to answer key questions about the case, such as whether the American Indian Studies program had any warning that Wise perceived problems with the appointment, as faculty members have alleged they did not, and whether Salaita’s tweets can truly be separated from his academic oeuvre. While the committee report references Salaita’s “impassioned” tweets in response to the fight “raging between Israeli troops and Palestinians in Gaza” last summer, Nelson said Salaita’s vociferously anti-Israel tweets started at least months before that violence broke out, and parallel thoughts in some of his previously published works. (Censure Threat, Inside Higher Education, April 28, 2015)

The Press Release, the Report and some comments follow.

The Scope of Protection for Speech at the University--A View From the University of Chicago

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

I have been considering the complications of both civility (Here) and academic freedom (e.g., Here and Here). Most institutions have expended a tremendous effort to avoid the issues (see, e.g., here, and here) or to redirect the conversation in ways that suit their own internal agendas (see, e.g., here).  Some institutions, public, have sought to build walls of constraint on faculty expression--privileging faculty status as university servants over their role as citizens in a democratic republic (see, e.g., here and here). 

In the case of Steven Salaita it has conflated issues of protection for speech and the constraints of civility to produce an ongoing and politically polarizing context.  (See here). The resulting intervention by a university committee would reject civility as a governance standard, while permitting the university to bring civility in through the "back door" by using evidence of incivility as circumstantial evidence of inability to meet professional academic standards. 

A committee of the University of Chicago has now also sought to add its institutional intervention to this conversation. Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression (Jan. 2015).  The Report explains:

The Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago was appointed in July 2014 by President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs “in light of recent events nationwide that have tested institutional commitments to free and open discourse.” The Committee’s charge was to draft a statement “articulating the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.”
The Committee has carefully reviewed the University’s history, examined events at other institutions, and consulted a broad range of individuals both inside and outside the University. This statement reflects the long-standing and distinctive values of the University of Chicago and affirms the importance of maintaining and, indeed, celebrating those values for the future. (Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression , supra, pp. 1)

This Statement has already received an important endorsement--from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE (FIRE Endorses University of Chicago’s New Free Speech Statement, Jan. 7, 2015).

The text of the Report follows, along with some comments on this effort.  While the University of Chicago provides a useful set of general principles, it may be less useful generally in two respects.  First, it provides little institutional guidance for implementation, especially for public universities.  Second, the University of Chicago was careful to note that the statement reflected its distinctive values--and by implication suggested that other universities may be (legitimate) values different from that of the University of Chicago that might merit some deviation from the broad principles developed for a first tier private university educating the children of global elites.

Steven Salaita, Civility, and Academic Freedom--Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the University of Illinois

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

I have not spoken to the Steven Salaita affair at the University of Illinois since the story broke earlier this year.

The university's August decision not to hire Salaita -- just weeks before he and his would-be faculty colleagues thought he would start teaching in the fall semester -- set off a huge national debate over academic freedom, civility and the role of trustees and administrators in reviewing hiring and tenure decisions. (Scott Jaschik, A Mixed Report on Salaita Controversy, Insider Higher Education (Dec. 24, 2014))

Though I have been considering the complications of both civility (Here) and academic freedom (e.g., Here and Here), my sense was that Professor Salaita's case presented a number of complicating factors, some technical (employment status), some institutional (procedures and protections principles at the University of Illinois) and some overtly political (using Professor Salaita as a proxy in the domestic intellectual front of the religious wars of the Middle East).  

Professor Salaita's case, then, has been is still too bound up in the personal and the greater culture wars to yet be useful for rigorous critical discussion. It is, I think, still far too early to sort all of these complications out, and to distill the governance and academic freedom issues from the rest for purposes of drawing lessons and suggesting better approaches in future cases. That is particularly the case with respect to the role of the institutional faculty as a critical stakeholder in this case at the University of Illinois.

It is to that later point that I write now. On December 23, 2014,  the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign issued a subcommittee “Report on the Investigation into the Matter of Steven Salaita” (the "Salaita Report"). The Salaita Report (see full PDF here) has been praised (e.g., here) and was well reported by Scott Jaschik, A Mixed Report on Salaita Controversy, Insider Higher Education (Dec. 24, 2014). It's most interesting discussion flows from a factual conclusion that it reaches--that Professor Salaita occupied a space between applicant and employee that triggered a set of obligations on the part of the University of Illinois, and from a rejection of civility as a standard for employment. I will consider those issues here.

New Essays From the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom

Apologies for the long silence. I have been absent far too long--duty called. But I am back now and things will be gearing up as we consider in more detail issues of social media, administrative bloat, electronic communications, the role of the board of trustees in a university and other interesting issues.

To get things started in a small way, I have included here links to a set of interesting articles that appear in the current issue of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom. This from their press release:

I’m pleased to announce that Volume Five of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom has just been published. This issue of JAF is focused on the intersection of electronic communications and academic freedom, specifically exploring the shifting landscape for academic freedom resulting from the proliferation of social media. Our intent with this issue is to examine how the advent of sites such as Facebook and Twitter blur the lines that separate areas of research expertise and broader public engagement, often leading to both a facilitation of and impingement on academic freedom.

The bulk of this year’s issue deals with various assaults upon academic freedom, most notably those originating from the increasingly techno-oriented world outside of the classroom that is now permeating the halls of academia. But we also devote a large portion of the issue to examining the systemic threats to our profession, whether it’s assaults on tenure, hiring, and the specter of corporatization that threatens to undermine the very ideals of higher education.

Links to the articles and brief descriptions follow:

Part I--University of Texas at Austin; Tracking Social Media Policies in U.S. Universties and Its General Implications

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

I have been following the development and roll out of the social media policy imposed by the Kansas Regents on its university system. The unfortunate history of the Kansas social media policy has led to to consider the issue of social media policy in other universities in the United States. To consider the implications and scope of the issues raised nationally, I am undertaking a series of posts that examine the social media policies of U.S. universities. 

These posts highlight the social media policies of United States universities.  The object is simple: (1) to catalog; (2) make policies more accessible, and (3) provide a  basis for comparison and discussion.  There will be little initial attempt at  analysis, though I will point out some unique or significant features.  The principal objective is data harvesting, comparison and increasingly analysis of the broader implications of these policies layered on atop the other to produce a dense mille-feuille of policy with substantial broader implications.


The nature of that effort was described in the Series Introduction.

This post considers the social media policy of the University of Texas--Austin.

Introduction: Tracking Social Media Policies in U.S. Universties and Its General Implications

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

I have been following the development and roll out of the social media policy imposed by the Kansas Regents on its university system.  (e.g., Surveillance and Control: The Kansas Regents Social Media Policy; Administrative Discretion, Employee Obligation, Citizen Duty, Human Dignity and the Possibility of Systemic Corruption).  This is part of a larger project that considers the extent to which universities, as a species of employer in the United States, are seeking to control the work and non-work speech of the people hires for service (e.g., On Administrative Overreaching: Threats, Social Media, and Academic Freedom, April 23, 2014;  Export Controls and the Control of Speech On University Campuses and By Faculty Abroad--On the Complicity of Universities and Government to Monitor and Restrict Access to Speech and Speakers, March 24, 2014; "The Tweeting Professor": A Parable About the Price of Speech Made in the Service of Others, July 3, 2013). And that, in turn touches on a broader project that I have undertaken--to explore the huma rights obligations of universities under international law and norms (e.g., More Penn State Wellness Programs in the News and From the Bottom Up, Aug. 12, 2013).

The unfortunate history of the Kansas social media policy, and the lamentable choices that the Kansas Regents appear to have clung to (despite the better choices offered them by their own stakeholders) suggests that the issue of social media policy provides an important indication of the scope and extent to which employers, as a general matter, are now asserting control rights over the lives of individuals.  This trend is important to understand for its legal, social, civil and political implications. Generalized, it suggests the extent to which the institutionalization of power beyond the state, and complicit with it at times, is freeing institutions (like business, religion, and universities) from the constraints of state control (though not of management by the state as a new form of soft though effective governance)while increasingly abstracting individuals and reducing then to a bundle of  intangible rights and obligations (flesh made abstract) that are contingent on the needs and interests of institutional actors (abstractions made flesh). This all the more so, for example, as recent trends in labor policy suggest that the increasing loosening of constraints on employer power may have some effects that touch on fundamental economic, social, civil and political rights (e.g., Rob Wiley, Belarus Is Planning To Bring Back Serfdom, Business Insider, May 29, 2014).

The implications are substantial.  They may suggest the re-drawing of power relationships between institutions (like corporations) and political organisms (like the governments of states).  They may also suggest the ways in which law is being transformed from a system of commands (laws that proscribe or command behaviors) to one of management (rules that assess performance or subject one to discipline for failures to conform or comply with objectives based or relational targets that are assessed in a variety of ways).  That shift from command to management also appears to widen significantly the scope of discretion that might be exercised by "overseers", those individuals or institutional devices tasked to monitor and assess conformance with standards. That shift, in turns, may materially affect the way one comes to understand in new and potentially odd ways, the meaning and application fo concepts like "rule of law" "abuse of discretion" and the like. It furthers suggests the character of the privatization of power over the control of the behavior of natural persons, from the state to the employer, and thus the nature of of the bargain that can be struck when a natural person hires herself out for "service"--the implications of the control that an individual cedes upon the acceptance of payment for "service" and the extent of the "service" to be rendered one's master are also nicely evidenced by the scope of the power of the employer to control the extent of personal and other communication by one in the service of the university institution.  Finally, and most broadly, these polices suggest another consequence of the transformation of individuals into commodified abstractions and of institutions into abstractions made flesh-- corporate speech is increasingly liberated while that of individuals is increasingly regulated (and especially through the employment relationship with corporations) (cf. Backer, Larry Catá, The Corporation as Semiosis, 'Citizens United,' the Signification of the Corporate Enterprise and the Development of Law (February, 28 2012). CPE Working Paper No. 2012-2). That control matrix will likely have material consequences for the way in which we understand the extent and locus of the individual right to speech under the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law and norms (e.g., Backer, Larry Catá, An Institutional Role for Civil Society within the U.N. Guiding Principles?: Comments on César Rodríguez-Garavito and Tatiana Andia 'Business and Human Rights: Beyond the End of the Beginning' (March 11, 2014). Implementing the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A South-Initiated North-South Dialogue Brown University, February 20-22, 2014).

Thus, starting with this post, I will highlight the social media policies of United States universities.  The object is simple: (1) to catalog; (2) make policies more accessible, and (3) provide a  basis for comparison and discussion.  Thus, for example, despite its may lamentable policy choices, the Kansas Regents were good on transparency (in the form of information accessibility) but less successful on engagement (engagement transparency).  It is not clear that all universities even commence with this basic embrace of transparency in the construction and dissemination of their social media policies.  We will see. The principal objective is data harvesting, comparison and increasingly analysis of the broader implications of these policies layered on atop the other to produce a dense mille-feuille of policy with substantial broader implications.

I will be including a table of contents here with links:

Part I--University of Texas at Austin.

Surveillance and Control: The Kansas Regents Social Media Policy; Administrative Discretion, Employee Obligation, Citizen Duty, Human Dignity and the Possibility of Systemic Corruption

I have been following the progress of events in the Kansas state university system, as its Regents struggle to develop a reasonable and coherent social media policy respectful of the human dignity and citizenship rights of its employees while protecting the limited but legitimate interests of the university (e.g., A Malediction for Academia--The Kansas Regents and the New Social Media Policy--Docility and Servility Against Academic Freedom and the Need for Contractual Protection (12-29-2013); Kansas Social Media Policy to be Reconsidered; Does a Segmented Approach to Academic Freedom Follow? (1-5-2014); The Rising Price of Speech on Campus (March 10, 2014); Proposing a Set of Social Media Policy Guidelines For Penn State University (March 17, 2014)).

 From Peggy Lowe, Strict Social Media Policy Approved By Kansas Board Of Regents, KCUR, May 14, 2014; "Critics of the social media policy stand during part of Wednesday's Kansas Board of Regents meeting in Topeka to demonstrate their opposition. Credit Stephen Koranda / KPR").

At the end of 2013, the Kansas Board of Regents, responding to a wave of bad press that met their initial ham handed effort to control the social media activities of university employees, declared that they would constitute a committee made up of senior administrators, faculty and staff to reconsider the issue. (Kansas Social Media Policy to be Reconsidered; Does a Segmented Approach to Academic Freedom Follow? (1-5-2014)). That committee came up with what appeared to be a reasonable policy, respectful of the human dignity rights of individuals and the material interests of the university.  (Available HERE: Social Media Work Group Draft Policy (.PDF)).  It appeared for a while that this draft policy would serve as the basis for a revised Regents' policy in Kansas. 

But this was not to be. "But Logan and two other regents differed with a working group proposal that the social media policy be scrapped and replaced with an advisory policy on proper use."Kansas regents stick with social media policy for universities, The Kansas City Star, April 17, 2014). And thus, the "Kansas state attorney general approved a revised policy that states any employee at a public university in the state can be fired over improperly using social media, raising questions that their First Amendment rights are being infringed upon."  ("Social media posts could get Kansas university employees fired," Foxnews, May 21, 2014 ("One of the elements of the new policy that has legal experts confused is the part that says a faculty member can face disciplinary action for "speech contrary to the interests of the university.")).  

The Policy and some commentary follows, including the Statement of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

On Administrative Overreaching: Threats, Social Media, and Academic Freedom

I have been writing about the increasing tendency of university administrations to become rigid and risk averse on a number of fronts.  (e.g., "Sandusky's Ghost" and the Weaponizing of Scandal--Administrative Disciplining of Faculty at the University of Colorado (Dec. 24, 2013);  A Malediction for Academia--The Kansas Regents and the New Social Media Policy--Docility and Servility Against Academic Freedom and the Need for Contractual Protection (Dec. 29. 2013); The Rising Price of Speech on Campus (March 10, 2014); Export Controls and the Control of Speech On University Campuses and By Faculty Abroad--On the Complicity of Universities and Government to Monitor and Restrict Access to Speech and Speakers (March 29, 2014)).  

I have also proposed policy changes for universities, at least respecting social media.  (Proposing a Set of Social Media Policy Guidelines For Penn State University (March 17, 2014)).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

But the problem not only persists but appears to be increasingly embedded in university governance cultures. It seems that the answer for many university administrators faced with controversy in political and social spaces that are traditionally dynamic is to (1) declare a broad authority to regulate, (2) produce regulations to confer an unconstrained discretion on administrators charged with carrying out its "objective", and (3) treat these regulations as trumping academic freedom, shared governance and the personal and human rights of the regulated class. While their motives, from an institutional perspective, are rational, their application becomes obsessively irrational. 

These issues were recently nicely discussed by academic and social commentator Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor.  Professor Reynolds suggests a combination of culturally institutional paranoia plus isolation may account for the problem.  I think that he is basically correct but that the culprit is the system in place to reward institutional paranoia in the form of rigidity and risk aversion. Until  universities stop being rewarded for producing (and universities stop rewarding) the administrators described in the article, this problem will only increase.

Working Toward a New Social Media Policy for Penn State--Some Resources for University Owned Social Media

I have been writing about issues of university control of social media and efforts to regulate the use of social media, including those neither owned nor controlled nor used for university purposes, but which are maintained by university employees. See Proposing a Set of Social Media Policy Guidelines For Penn State University and links there.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

This post includes links to social media policies for academic libraries.  There is much that might be usefully learned here as universities move forward toward social media policies respectful of their own interests and mission and those of the individual liberty interests of its faculty and staff.