AAUP-OSU Statement on Academic Freedom and Responsibility
- AAUP OSU
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
A Troubling Trend
Recently, we have witnessed a spate of severe and highly dubious disciplinary actions taken against faculty.
At Indiana University, a professor was sanctioned for including too much “personal ideology” in his classes. At Texas A&M, a professor was dismissed for teaching content that did not conform to the official course description. And at Texas State University, a professor was terminated for hypothetical remarks delivered at a conference.
In each of these cases, targeted faculty have been presumed guilty, without due process. Punishments have been carried out with haste, shirking fact-finding or internal review procedures in favor of administrative fiat.
While such overreach appears to be a clear violation of academic freedom, leadership at these institutions have justified their actions by appealing to rules governing professional decorum. “This is not about academic freedom,” Texas A&M President Mark A. Welsh III said. “It is about academic responsibility.” (Welsh has subsequently stepped down, as yet another casualty of this controversy, alongside the faculty member, a department head, and a College Dean.)
Such arguments, emphasizing responsibility over freedom, are a variation on a recent theme in American higher education, namely: top-down, politically motivated efforts to suppress disfavored courses and topics of study and punish the faculty who teach them.
The leadership of AAUP-OSU strongly urges the OSU administration to distance itself from the weaponization of academic responsibility as a tool to muzzle critical thought and open inquiry in the classroom and throughout the university.
Understanding Academic Freedom and Responsibility
Academic responsibility is a cornerstone principle of any understanding of academic freedom, as established nationally by the AAUP and enshrined in OSU’s own faculty rule (Chapter 3335-5-01) defining these terms. As faculty we understand better than anyone that the privilege of academic freedom comes with an equally important ethical obligation.
The ability to teach and research freely rests upon an assumption of disciplinary expertise and professional competence. At OSU, we have strong internal procedures that uphold such expectations for our research and teaching, including robust and rigorous policies governing hiring, annual review, and promotion. These standards allow our faculty the great privilege to partake in “the free search for truth and its free exposition” deemed “essential” by our Board of Trustees “to the preservation of a free society.”
But to carry out that mission––to freely cultivate knowledge and a more comprehensive understanding of the world, cosmos, and human condition for the benefit of society as a whole––we must vigorously resist efforts to rein in and circumscribe what we are allowed to study and teach, including the terms we use to define those areas of inquiry.
Academic responsibility, in other words, should not come at the expense of academic freedom.
Freedom, Responsibility, and SB1
In Ohio, concerns about the erosion of academic freedom have been amplified by the rush to comply with Senate Bill 1 (SB1).This law simultaneously limits the academic freedom of faculty while taking away important academic responsibilities.
The work to implement SB1––done in haste and with little procedural clarity or input from faculty––has resulted in wide-ranging revision to unit-level governing documents (such as Patterns of Administration) and faculty teaching materials (such as course syllabi), including the systematic deletion of anything that rings of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).
At OSU, this has provoked serious debate about the scope and legality––to say nothing of the ethics or wisdom––of such revision, at all levels of the university. As a matter of academic freedom and responsibility, there is a clear tension with our own rules (Chapter 3335-5-01), which state that it is the academic responsibility of faculty to “work with appropriate individuals and bodies to provide optimal conditions conducive to the attainment of the free search for truth and its free expression.” How can we responsibly carry out our academic mission when topics are declared off-limits and speech is stifled?
The question of land acknowledgements has been particularly fraught. OSU recently announced a ban on such statements across the university, including on most course documents, defining them as “statements on behalf of an issue or cause” and thus prohibited by SB1. The bill, it should be noted, does not mention land acknowledgements specifically, and other universities have maintained such statements, highlighting OSU’s overly compliant position.
Faced with criticism of this policy and posture, the administration has doubled down on the rhetoric of responsibility. In conversations with AAUP members and others, university administrators have defended the curtailing of land acknowledgements by asserting the right to define and limit what is pertinent to university teaching and learning, appealing to the faculty rule (3335-5-01) governing academic freedom and responsibility.
We find this reasoning specious and dangerous. In the case of land acknowledgements, the ban on factual information is a troubling example of overcompliance to SB1 and a transparent attempt to appease and cower in an anti-"DEI" moment. Already, we have observed the chilling effect of such policies in our classrooms, with faculty erring on the side of caution when confronted with the question of what is permissible.
This culture of fear and uncertainty, here at OSU and around the country, is anathema to academic freedom. Faculty are experts in their fields, and they should be trusted to make judgments about responsible pedagogy. We are also entrusted by students to make our campus and classrooms communities of support whether the stress of the day is related to course material or not. Creating spaces of academic freedom and responsibility cannot be legislated or regulated into existence.
Freedom, Academic and Otherwise, at the Crossroads
Academic freedom is the condition of responsible scholarship, teaching, and learning. Without freedom, responsibility is reduced to rule-following and administrative conformity, with disastrous implications for research and teaching.
When, in the name of “academic responsibility,” we delete statements of value, principle, and, indeed, fact (in the case of land acknowledgements) from our governing and teaching documents, and when, in an effort to conform to administrative propriety, we strain to find the right, permissible words to articulate our curricular and scholarly purpose, in deference to an increasingly restrictive university culture post-SB1 (and here we might add bans on campus chalking and restrictions to student dorm room decoration to our list), we risk losing not only our academic freedom, but freedom more generally.