At a recent Faculty Assembly meeting, a body of delegates from each of the 17 UNC System institutions, Wade Maki, chair of the assembly and UNC-Greensboro professor, asked its members to raise their hand if they had colleagues who were afraid of losing their job because of something they said in the classroom. Every delegate raised their hand, acknowledging concerns about academic freedom.
He asked them again to raise their hand if they had colleagues who were afraid of losing their job because of something they posted on their private social media accounts. Again, every delegate raised their hand.
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“I can’t think of anything that better expresses the climate that we are in,” Maki said.
North Carolina has narrowly avoided being in the spotlight alongside the slew of universities to fire faculty over speech both in and out of the classroom. But just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that academics feel entirely safe from the national phenomenon. Some say the anticipation is creating a culture of fear and self-censorship among faculty in the classroom and when interacting with the media.
‘Aggression’ toward academic freedom
Todd Berliner is the president of the recently revived American Association of University Professors UNC-Wilmington chapter. He and the eight others on the executive committee resurrected the chapter because of the “unprecedented aggression toward faculty and toward academic freedom that has erupted” in the last year, though it’s really been happening for nearly a decade, he told Carolina Public Press.
What were once commonly shared values in academia like shared governance and academic freedom have become politicized and challenged, Berliner said.
Several high-profile firings occurred this year due to professors speaking on issues related to gender identity — one at Texas A&M after a gender and sexuality lesson in a literature class and another at the University of Oklahoma after a psychology professor gave a student a failing grade on an assignment that cited the Bible to disagree with the notion that there are more than two genders. Both raised concerns about the state of academic freedom in higher education.
In September, an associate professor — a rank that typically indicates academics have obtained tenure at their institutions — at a small private North Carolina college declined an interview request from CPP because the person did “not feel it is safe to even report on academic/scientific expertise, as that is now often attacked, and professors are now being reprimanded/fired for taking such a stance.”
Instances like these indicate a newly aggressive climate toward the mission of academia and the open exchange of ideas, Berliner said.
“When faculty feel threatened and when this kind of aggression is directed toward faculty, we can’t do our best work, and we need to be able to think freely and expose ourselves and our students to whatever ideas are pertinent to the issues of the day and to history in order to gain understanding,” he said.
Aside from disagreements over course material, public statements on current events and other outside political activity have also resulted in retribution for academics. As many as 40 faculty members were fired this year over comments related to the assassination of firebrand conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the national branch of the American Association of University Professors told The Guardian in October.
North Carolina had just one documented firing of a part-time instructor at Guilford Technical Community College who was fired for statements she made in class on Kirk’s death, though multiple K-12 teachers were placed on leave and fired for similar social media posts.
UNC-Chapel Hill placed Asian and Middle Eastern Studies professor Dwayne Dixon on administrative leave in October to investigate his former involvement with an “anti-racist, anti-fascist, community defense formation” known as Redneck Revolt after Fox News published an article linking Dixon to the group, though the organization dissolved in 2019. The university reinstated Dixon after it conducted a “thorough threat assessment” and the ACLU of North Carolina published a letter stating it would pursue legal action on Dixon’s behalf.
Berliner has observed self-censorship happening among his colleagues at UNCW, particularly untenured professors and professors who are not naturalized U.S. citizens, meaning those that are in the country legally but are not citizens. He said while he and others of course comply with the directives they receive from their institutions and the government, self-censorship is a form of overcompliance that should be avoided.
“They are very worried, and they are being exceedingly careful, more careful than they should be, in order not to antagonize or present knowledge that is contrary to government-approved knowledge,” he said.
“This is how authoritarian control of education thrives, because it’s very hard to censor people. For a government to censor people, it takes a huge apparatus. But if the strategy is the threat that you will be censored and the threat that you would lose your job or not get tenure or be deported, then the government doesn’t have to do the dirty work of censorship anymore, because the faculty are doing that work for the government.”
Limiting free speech
Some universities, including private colleges, are beginning to say the quiet part out loud.
Duke University sent an email in August to its Sanford School of Public Policy faculty directing them to route any media inquiries regarding “overarching issues confronting the University” to Vice President for Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs Frank Tramble, but encouraged them to continue speaking with the news media about matters pertaining to their research, as reported by Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle last month.
Aside from the email to Sanford faculty, “Faculty in a few other departments received similar encouragements to route communications to central channels,” The Chronicle reported.
Even if universities openly encourage their faculty to exercise academic freedom in sharing their research but caution against responding to news media inquiries on issues facing higher education at-large, that can create a culture of fear that results in self-censorship, said Dominic Coletti of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“If a person of authority is saying you should think twice about talking about this topic or that topic, that’s going to make it more difficult and make it less likely that anyone is going to talk about this topic or that topic, even if the person in authority says, ‘Look, we’re not trying to censor you. We’re not going to punish you for it,’” he said.
“The thought that you may face disapproval, you may face some kind of backlash from somebody who has power over you, even if that’s not explicitly threatened, is going to make you second guess whether or not you should say something, regardless of how valuable your opinion or your additional context might be to the discourse surrounding a particular situation.”
It also suggests that not all speech is good speech and speaking on broader issues like DEI practices in higher education, for example, could bring scrutiny to your own university and constrain its academic freedom.
“Because you are going to think about what is the government saying, what are the people who have power over me saying and how could the things that I’m saying lead to consequences, not just for me, but for the institution or for other people that I work with,” he said.
“Once you start thinking that way, that really does lead to an increase in self-censorship.”
Some academic areas are also more likely to be impacted by such restrictions, Coletti said, as is exhibited by Duke’s message being sent primarily to its public policy faculty.
“While the university said you can continue to talk about your research, what is a political science professor who talks about the ways that government shapes academia supposed to do?” Coletti said.
“Obviously that person is going to be an expert on the exact sort of thing that is affecting Duke University right now. It creates a culture of fear for professors to talk about their research, but it also creates an environment where you’re less likely to have open and honest conversations about the reality that you’re living in.”
“Duke has sound principles on academic freedom that are developed and overseen by our faculty, and we will always protect and support their ability to speak on behalf of their work,” a Duke spokesperson told CPP.
Maki and Berliner both made the distinction that Duke’s directive seemed to restrain faculty’s freedom of speech while still trying to protect their academic freedom, but Coletti said they are two sides of the same coin that is the broader freedom of expression.
The question of what is the difference between the two is one that Maki and other UNC System faculty are confronting by attempting to define what exactly “academic freedom” means to the System. There’s currently no definition in the policy manual aside from assertions that academic freedom is a bedrock value and faculty have it so long as they are using it responsibly — a key word to note, Maki said — and that they won’t be subject to unreasonable restrictions.
“Lawyers love both of those words, because they’re very flexible,” he said. “And of course, in the absence of clarity, it is the people in positions of power that have the advantage.”
The Faculty Assembly passed a resolution in October that seeks to create a standard definition which will not only draw clearer guidelines for where faculty are protected in their speech but also where they are not. The Board of Governors could consider the proposal as early as January.
“Fear is real,” Maki said. “The fear is real. Faculty all over the country are very cautious about what they say because of the potential of drawing — whether it’s state or federal or just a general local public — heat on the institution. And that’s not just in what they say, that includes research.”
“That’s not helpful for anyone, right? And that’s why academic freedom work is so important. We have to be able to say, as experts following the policies and laws, we need the protection to be able to do that. Otherwise, the students aren’t getting the classroom instruction at the level they should, and the public isn’t getting the benefits of research that faculty produce.”
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