UNC System News: Redefining Academic Freedom

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"A UNC System Board of Governors committee on Wednesday advanced a proposal to define “academic freedom” across the state’s public universities, despite pushback from a faculty group and their lawyers.

The policy, which heads to the full board for consideration next month, includes the definition that the system’s Faculty Assembly approved in October. In part, the explanation reads that “academic freedom is the foundational principle that protects the rights of all faculty to engage in teaching, research/creative activities, service, and scholarly inquiry without undue influence.”

But the system added sections that would set the “parameters” of academic freedom for faculty and its “protections” for students, such as the freedom to “take reasoned exception” to ideas presented in their classes.

“Academic freedom is not absolute,” the policy reads, later stating that the term does not protect faculty teaching content that is “clearly unrelated” to their course descriptions or disciplines; using “university resources for political or ideological advocacy”; or refusing to comply with university policies and accreditation standards.

In the eyes of the state chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the restrictions “effectively weaken the definition and historical scope of academic freedom.” That’s according to a letter Raleigh attorneys Mike Tadych and Ashley Fox sent Monday on behalf of the faculty group to three UNC System administrators, including Andrew Tripp, the system’s top lawyer. (The Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych law firm, where Tadych and Fox practice, also represents The Assembly.)

The letter did not threaten legal action but raised several concerns about the policy and urged the system to put it on “indefinite hold” until more faculty and students could give their input.

“Irrespective of rationale, the impulse to fence in academic freedom should be disregarded and eschewed,” Tadych and Fox wrote. “The convenience of defining an academic freedom “box” is antithetical to case law, our constitutions, and historical approaches.”

Belle Boggs, president of N.C. AAUP, said in a statement that the group believes the proposal “is a rushed, unnecessary policy that will inhibit research and teaching, especially in disfavored subjects and in interdisciplinary approaches to learning.”

“It is vaguely worded in problematic ways, and it is clearly a response to culture war politics,” Boggs added.

In their letter, Tadych and Fox identified several terms in the policy they felt were vague, which they said could lead to “an academic environment that is inconsistent” with prior interpretations and standards handed down by federal courts. For instance, the policy says students are to be protected from “arbitrary or capricious” academic evaluation but does not elaborate.

The restriction echoes a recent episode at the University of Oklahoma, where an instructor was removed from her teaching duties after she gave a student a failing grade on an assignment in which the student cited the Bible to support her view that “belief in multiple genders” is “demonic,” the Associated Press reported. The student accused the instructor of religious discrimination, and the university said the instructor had been “arbitrary” in her grading. (The professor wrote in her comments on the student’s assignment that she was “not deducting points because you have certain beliefs.”)

Additionally, Tadych and Fox noted that the proposal does not clearly define terms such as the “institutional policies” faculty are required to follow, which could cause confusion when enforcing the new policy.

That also raised a red flag for Duke University professor Don Taylor. In a Substack post, Taylor argued the provision “provides the opportunity for a constituent institution to develop a policy that makes academic freedom toothless in a chosen area.” (Taylor’s professional background is in health policy, but he’s taken an interest in academic freedom in recent years and often writes about the topic.)

“For example, a policy like ‘you cannot talk about slavery’ or ‘you cannot assign a reading that is critical of the U.S.’ or ‘fill in the blank of whatever is controversial in the future’ could practically be banned while claiming to protect academic freedom,” Taylor wrote.

The UNC System doesn’t have such policies impacting classroom instruction, though last year it prohibited universities from requiring students to take courses related to diversity. But restrictions like the ones Taylor cited are not unheard of elsewhere. The Texas A&M University System, for instance, now requires professors to get approval from their school’s president to teach courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” Many faculty have criticized the move as a violation of their academic freedom.

Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky who researches free speech in higher education, said it will be crucial for faculty and administrators to understand the policy and the enforcement mechanisms for it to be “more than aspirational.”

“Language and a policy is useful and important, but it really is the devil in the details of implementation,” Hutchens said.

Still, Hutchens said the UNC System considering protections for academic freedom at all is a notable endeavor compared to the actions of other university systems, like Texas A&M."

“While there could be places where people may have qualms with the policy, it’s also encouraging to see a state system that is thinking seriously about what rights that faculty should have in relation to academic freedom, and also the rights of students in learning,” Hutchens said. “We’re unfortunately seeing some states that are going in completely the opposite direction and really trying to dictate very specific details in the classroom and obliterate academic freedom.”

Korie Dean​

korie@theassemblync.com
 
altmin said:
www.insidehighered.com

UNC Admin Can Now, Officially, Secretly Record Faculty

The new policy prohibits students from recording class without permission but explicitly allows administrators to surveil professors for any “lawful purpose.”
www.insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com
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The bottom of this slippery slope is everything in the classroom is recorded and screened for words and phrases associated with politically unfavorable ideas and it won’t only be the professors who are being watched.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
The bottom of this slippery slope is everything in the classroom is recorded and screened for words and phrases associated with politically unfavorable ideas and it won’t only be the professors who are being watched.
Click to expand...


I've been working on the premise that I was being recorded all along.
 
altmin said:
www.insidehighered.com

UNC Admin Can Now, Officially, Secretly Record Faculty

The new policy prohibits students from recording class without permission but explicitly allows administrators to surveil professors for any “lawful purpose.”
www.insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com
Click to expand...


UNC Administrators Can Now Secretly Record Faculty​

The new policy prohibits students from recording class without permission but explicitly allows administrators to surveil professors for any “lawful purpose.”
By Emma Whitford

he University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently rolled out a new policy that permits university officials to record classes without notifying the instructor. It’s a practice administrators have used in the past to investigate professors but have now formalized in writing.

According to the policy, administrators may, with the provost and general counsel’s written permission, record classes or access existing recordings without telling faculty in order to “gather evidence in connection with an investigation into alleged violations of university policy” and “for any other lawful purpose, when authorized in writing by the provost and the office of university counsel, who will consult with the chair of the faculty.”

Mehdi Shadmehr, an associate professor of public policy at UNC, told Inside Higher Ed the policy is “completely outside any kind of norm.”

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“This is something that governments in Iran and Syria and East Germany and maybe military regimes back in the day in Argentina and Brazil would do, but in the United States? That’s just crazy,” he said.

Students are prohibited from recording in class without explicit permission from the instructor—a practice that has landed professors at other universities in political hot water in recent months. UNC students may seek an exemption to record through the accessibility resources office if needed, the policy states. Faculty members may record their own classes for “instructional purposes” but must notify students prior to recording. To record classes as part of tenure and promotion evaluation, the university must notify instructors of the forthcoming recording at least seven calendar days in advance and work with the instructor to find a class date that is “representative of the overall course.”

A spokesperson for UNC did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about the policy but said in a statement that its purpose was to “provide procedural clarity” and “protect both instructors and students.”

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The spokesperson also said the policy had been developed with “feedback from across campus, including Faculty Governance, the Offices of Faculty Affairs, Human Resources, University Council and the University Compliance Office,” a point faculty members dispute.

The formal recording rules have been in the works for a while, said Shadmehr. In 2024, the university opted not to renew the contract of economics instructor Larry Chavis, whose classes administrators had secretly recorded prior to their decision. In a letter to Chavis, senior associate dean Christian Lundblad said the Office of the Undergraduate Business Program received “reports concerning class content and conduct within your class,” and that in response, the university recorded four of his classes using the existing Panopto camera in the classroom.

“Notice is not required to record classes, and we do record classes without notice in response to concerns raised by students,” Lundblad wrote to Chavis, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and outspoken advocate for Indigenous and LGBTQ+ rights. “We wanted to let you know that we will continue recording your class as part of a formal review process.”

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Faculty quickly raised concerns about the recording rules, and then-provost Chris Clemens told faculty members that the university would work on creating a formal policy, Shadmehr said.

Months passed before professors received any updates about the policy. Earlier this week, interim provost Jim Dean told faculty leaders that he’d shared the draft policy with “a number of people” for final comments, and he plans for the policy to take effect Monday, Shadmehr said.

Most faculty members learned about the new policy via their American Association of University Professors chapter and the local news, said Mark Peifer, a biology professor at UNC. They have not been formally notified by the university.

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Continued next...
 
University leaders—from the systemwide Board of Governors to the provost—have made several decisions in recent months that curb professors’ freedoms in the classroom. UNC system president Peter Hans announced in December that syllabi will be considered public records and that faculty must share them online beginning next fall. A week later, the university decided—with no formal announcement to faculty—to shutter its six area studies centers. At the end of this month, the system Board of Governors will vote on a formal—but contested—definition of academic freedom that states it is “not absolute” and prohibits teaching material “clearly unrelated to the course description.”

The word-of-mouth news is “exactly what happened with the area study center closures,” Peifer said. “It came out in the student newspaper—that’s how faculty found out about it. The area studies directors were told the day before because the university knew that it was coming out in the newspaper.”

Students, staff, faculty (including visiting faculty), teaching assistants, postdoctoral scholars, contractors and vendors are subject to the new policy. It does not spell out limitations or permissions for campus visitors, who have secretly recorded conversations with faculty members in the past.


Just earlier this week, North Carolina State University fired the assistant director of its LGBTQ Pride Center after the anti-DEI group Accuracy in Media secretly recorded him appearing to violate system policies regarding institutional neutrality on political issues. Employees at three other North Carolina institutions—UNC Charlotte, UNC Asheville and Western Carolina University—have also lost or left their jobs after Accuracy in Media stings."

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I've updated this essay so I'm placing it here.


#OTD (Feb 12) in 1795 Hinton James arrived on the UNC campus-The 1st student at the 1st state university. Legend is that he walked from present day Pender County. After Carolina he became a civil engineer and legislator. You can read more on James at this link from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../hinton-james-first-student-at...

When James arrived, three weeks after the official opening of the University on January 15, there was one Professor, David Ker, and two buildings. (Old) East Building stood, its cornerstone had been laid on October 12, 1793 - a date celebrated as University Day on campus - and an unpainted wooden house served as a place for Ker to live. There was, as I understand it, a tavern near where Raleigh, Hillsborough, and East Franklin Streets converge. To this old bartender that seems somehow right. Eventually 40 more young men joined James that first semester. That they were all late for class also somehow seems right.

It has always struck me as one of the many paradoxes of The Tar Heel State that we had led in higher education from the very start yet were such historically consistent laggards in primary and secondary public schooling. I’m not sure, I haven’t studied it enough, about the motivations of those earliest legislators in establishing the first state university. I do know that “on December 18, 1776, delegates to the state's constitutional convention approved Article 41: ‘That a school or schools be established by the Legislature, for the convenient Instruction of Youth, with such Salaries to the Masters, paid by the Public, as may enable them to instruct at low prices; and all useful Learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more Universities.’”
https://docsouth.unc.edu/true/chapter/chp01-01/chp01-01.html

Today the North Carolina Constitution states in Article 9, Section 9, “Benefits of public institutions of higher education. The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.” So much for Originalism of Constitutional Text.

Education always seemed to be abuzz in my world growing up in #DeepChatham. Neither of my parents went beyond high school but I had two teacher-aunts, Burdine and Leisel, that taught me and everyone around them with their every breath. Aunt Burdine was, eventually, Supervisor of Chatham County Schools and Aunt Leisel taught for decades in Bennett (#DeepestChatham). I only recently learned that my Grandfather Floyd Womble had also been a school teacher before taking up surveying. And despite their own brief education my parents were voracious readers and backers of local schools and teachers. There was never a question that I would not go to college. My dream was always Carolina.

I recall the respect held for the work that teachers had put in to achieve their places in front of the classroom. I also remember the high regard that everyone surrounding me showed our teachers for their daily work of educating the community and, of course, local children and teens. Being in the trenches of public instruction meant they were experts on learning. How could that be doubted - after all, they had studied hard, harder than the rest, and more important, continued to do so as life-long learners. As all teachers know - there is nothing quite like teaching to literally make you learn.

Now that did not mean that there was no wisdom outside of the school. Examples of sharp people were certainly all around. I saw it regularly in my Deddy’s hardware store as farmers worked out solutions to the everyday challenges of agriculture on the family farm. ‘The Progressive Farmer Magazine’ always provided ideas. Book-learning seemed to have its esteemed place just the same. The assertion that teachers lived in an “Ivory Tower” was heard from time-to-time and of course the Jesse Helmses of the airwaves belittled the profession exactly because of the impulse, the necessity, if you will, to make learning a living thing, constantly corrected and revised as new information was discovered about old ways and times. The “Ivory Tower” insult has always seemed childishly absurd and simplistic - as if teachers lived in a world devoid of mortgages or taxes or personal liabilities or broken water pumps.

Still, the respect for teachers has nigh onto disappeared today - they - WE - are but contributors to the Social Contract and the common good alongside our fellow citizens. But the enmity so prevalent today in some - I have paid attention to School Board gatherings and viewed many exchanges while reading about others - is elevated. Rather than the historical or the scientific record as established by research, teachers now seem subject to the unique, sundry, and hoodwinked worldviews of a vocal cadre of Extreme Rightist parents as to what they can teach. The inexperienced want to mandate curriculum to the teachers now.

Do teachers have ‘unique worldviews’ as well? No doubt about it. Are they “pushing” those ways of seeing on students? In as much as reality is embedded in subjects such as history, math, chemistry, and geography and reality is the stuff of studying those things and more - then probably so. Teachers are also “pushing” reading and analysis and thinking critically on their students. Sometimes the critiques arrived upon by those students stray from the mainstream. Sometimes those critiques range far from those of their parents. Far more often than not, that is due to good, old fashioned, hard work.

At UNC these days the teachers are being told that they can no longer lead in decisions over what will be taught but rather the Board of Trustees will order such things. The BOT at the behest of the Big Wigs that put them there have created the School of Civic Life and Leadership. “The Wall Street Journal” has praised this “conservative safe space’s”direction as addressing “abstruse woke politics” in the university. The student newspaper, “The Daily Tar Heel” has brought solid coverage to the affair. Read here for an example: https://www.dailytarheel.com/.../02/university-bot-follow-up

The entire imagining of The Carolina “Anti-Woke Studies” Curriculum smacks of amateur, uninformed, unprepared, Rightist utopian dreaming. This so-called conservative branch of the university carried an original price tag, absolutely guaranteed to skyrocket, of $5 million dollars. That is not projected at $12.7 million annually by the 2026–27 academic year. A Professor Walks Into a Storm

Cont.
 
On many of the branch campuses of the UNC System under the direction of the Board of Governors (bosses to the Board of Trustees), administrators have taken their long knives to departments that do not provide properly quantifiable $$$$ “Return On Investment” - A ‘buy-out’ of Professors has decimated faculties in some places - and adjuncts have been terminated. Staff, the tenders of campus infrastructure and providers of multiple student and faculty services face the concrete threat of dismissal. And the consultants and private investigative agencies write their General Assembly commissioned reports. Read here for a critique of the “Return on Investment” study that helped to slice and dice the System: https://ncnewsline.com/.../new-study-looks-as-return-on.../

And finally a combo NCGA/MAGA mandate has ordered diversity as a concept in coursework a verboten focus prohibited from graduation requirements. Snowflakes rejoice!! On four campuses (UNC Charlotte, UNC Asheville, Western Carolina, and last week, NC State) private right-wing “gotcha” squads have secretly recorded employees, determined that they have violated the gag order on mentioning heterogeneity, and seen to their dismissals. In December, UNC Chapel Hill announced that it would be shuttering six area studies centers (the Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies), lest students turn from naval-gazing to understanding the rest of the planet.

Hinton James purportedly walked from Wilmington to Chapel Hill to gain an education from the teachers there - at the time only Professor David Ker awaited him but over the decades to come thousands of amazing faculty who had studied and researched around the world have taught the students and designed the courses at Carolina and the other System campuses. They have labored over what readings to assign, and in what order, how to fairly test and assess, and spent out-of-class time keeping up with, and contributing to, their disciplines. One has to wonder to what depth the Board of Trustees has delved in thinking through the syllabi for the courses in their new School of Civic Life and Leadership. What readings by which authors will they assign for such classes? Of course they have not, and will not work on such things. Wonder who they will hire to do that work since the UNC faculty has been cut out of this process?

Oh, and by the way, in the fall of ’26 across the UNC system, all syllabi will be required to be publicly accessible. Finally, someone will read the syllabus? Perhaps?

In the System schools now being required to slash one must also wonder how the Board of Governors’ Bottom Lining of Education will work for the students and children of the state. Quantitative measures have a place but they’re also likely, even prone, to politically self-serving self-fulfilling prophecy. This angle of attack, one surely would make our long-departed Senator No/Helms look up and grin that crooked smile, will bring us low and wrench us for all time from any competitive position among thinkers, but also among dancers, singers, poets, playwrights, and artists of all stripes. The Leveling of Carolina is in full swing.

One also has to wonder if Hinton James had thought that partisan political appointees would be choosing his course work and limiting his thought horizons to simply ‘Return On Investment’ markers that he might just have headed north, or worse, stopped in Durham for his education.* He was no Snowflake after all - his legendary trek is a testament to that.

*Yes I know that Duke didn’t exist yet.
 
donbosco said:
University leaders—from the systemwide Board of Governors to the provost—have made several decisions in recent months that curb professors’ freedoms in the classroom. UNC system president Peter Hans announced in December that syllabi will be considered public records and that faculty must share them online beginning next fall. A week later, the university decided—with no formal announcement to faculty—to shutter its six area studies centers. At the end of this month, the system Board of Governors will vote on a formal—but contested—definition of academic freedom that states it is “not absolute” and prohibits teaching material “clearly unrelated to the course description.”

The word-of-mouth news is “exactly what happened with the area study center closures,” Peifer said. “It came out in the student newspaper—that’s how faculty found out about it. The area studies directors were told the day before because the university knew that it was coming out in the newspaper.”

Students, staff, faculty (including visiting faculty), teaching assistants, postdoctoral scholars, contractors and vendors are subject to the new policy. It does not spell out limitations or permissions for campus visitors, who have secretly recorded conversations with faculty members in the past.


Just earlier this week, North Carolina State University fired the assistant director of its LGBTQ Pride Center after the anti-DEI group Accuracy in Media secretly recorded him appearing to violate system policies regarding institutional neutrality on political issues. Employees at three other North Carolina institutions—UNC Charlotte, UNC Asheville and Western Carolina University—have also lost or left their jobs after Accuracy in Media stings."

​

Click to expand...
Oh, yeah. This "you must publish your syllabi and allow yourself to be recorded" kick is nothing more than a way for right-wing busybodies with nothing else to do in their lives, or for more organized right-wing "watchdog" groups, to get professors they don't like fired, or at least reprimanded. It's "gotcha" education and "parental rights" raised to an absurd level. Imagine knowing that everything you say in public is being recorded by people who likely don't like you and want to get you into trouble or even fired from your job for simply saying something they disagree with, and so they can gain publicity for themselves as a "social media warrior", just like the student and mom in Oklahoma who raised a stink about a professor giving the poor little victim a zero on a paper. In NC now you can be fired or at least reprimanded just for what you say. Dark days in American higher ed.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Oh, yeah. This "you must publish your syllabi and allow yourself to be recorded" kick is nothing more than a way for right-wing busybodies with nothing else to do in their lives, or for more organized right-wing "watchdog" groups, to get professors they don't like fired, or at least reprimanded. It's "gotcha" education and "parental rights" raised to an absurd level. Imagine knowing that everything you say in public is being recorded by people who likely don't like you and want to get you into trouble or even fired from your job for simply saying something they disagree with, and so they can gain publicity for themselves as a "social media warrior", just like the student and mom in Oklahoma who raised a stink about a professor giving the poor little victim a zero on a paper. In NC now you can be fired or at least reprimanded just for what you say. Dark days in American higher ed.
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Hail to the brightest Star of all
Clear its radiance shine
Carolina priceless gem,
Receive all praises thine

UNC has been one of the few priceless gems that North Carolina has had to offer. You would think that our state would avidly promote and support UNC and enhance its national reputation as a top 5 public university.

Alas, the GQP/MAGA state legislature has been hell bent on destroying one of the few priceless gems our state has to offer.
 
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