The AAUP continues to back away from academic freedom

This week, the American Association of University Professors gave its blessing to mandatory “diversity statements” in hiring — as long as the faculty votes for them first. FIRE has long argued that such statements can too easily function as ideological litmus tests and has repeatedly warned against them.

The AAUP’s new statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation” marks yet another departure from the organization’s roots as a stalwart protector of faculty members’ right to dissent from the orthodoxies of the day, whatever those might be. 

Earlier this summer, after a year of increasing pressure on universities to boycott Israel, the AAUP also reversed its previous stance against academic boycotts.

Both statements confer the organization’s blessing on deeply suspect efforts by some faculty to silence or marginalize fellow professors with unpopular opinions, research, or conclusions. 

The AAUP insists academic boycotts and DEI hiring criteria won’t threaten academic freedom — as long as everyone is always super careful. 

FIRE’s position on academic boycotts has not changed

News

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff argued that academic boycotts of a nation’s institutions or scholars cannot be reconciled with academic freedom.

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In its latest statement, the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure notes that “some critics” (Hey, that’s us!) contend the use of DEI criteria and mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring and evaluation can 

run afoul of the principles of academic freedom. Specifically, they have characterized DEI statements as ‘ideological screening tools’ and ‘political litmus tests.’ From this perspective, DEI statements are sometimes thought to constitute unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and a threat to faculty members’ academic freedom because they allegedly require candidates to adopt or act upon a set of moral and political views. 

With the exception of the word “allegedly,” this is a pretty fair description of the main problem with mandatory DEI statements. 

FIRE is careful to consider each such policy individually, as not every statement requirement is the same. But in general, when employees or job applicants are required to pledge or prove their allegiance to a school’s interpretation of DEI concepts, we object precisely because ensuring that allegiance is the stated goal of the policy. From the perspective of the policy authors, that’s not a bug, it’s the key feature. 

Schools adopting DEI requirements want to filter out people who don’t or can’t agree to act upon the institution’s specific set of views in the classroom and in their service work. If colleges and universities didn’t care whether applicants agreed with their conception of DEI, why would they bother to ask applicants to demonstrate that agreement? 

In such cases, no “allegedly” is needed. Indeed, many DEI statement requirements arose out of “anti-racism” committees established in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the subsequent widespread protests. Such committees unavoidably ascribe to a particularized view of racism and how it operates in society.

FIRE isn’t alone in our observation that these policies can operate as ideological filters — many faculty think they do, too. A 2022 FIRE survey found faculty were almost evenly split on whether DEI statements in hiring were a justifiable requirement for a university job (50%) or are an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom (50%). While that’s bad on its own, a whopping 90% of conservative faculty, the group most likely to dissent from prevailing campus views on DEI, viewed such statements as political litmus tests. The Washington Post’s Editorial Board cited the survey in an op-ed arguing that “[w]hatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing.” 

So are these critics right? The AAUP’s answer is a firm “not necessarily.” 

AAUP “rejects the notion that the use of DEI criteria for faculty evaluation is categorically incompatible with academic freedom.” OK, great — when is it not compatible? “[W]hen implemented appropriately in accordance with sound standards of faculty governance, DEI criteria — including DEI statements — can be a valuable component in the efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse faculty with a breadth of skills needed for excellence in teaching, research, and service.”

What, then, makes for an “appropriately implemented” set of DEI criteria? 

The primary qualification seems to be that a school’s faculty, not the administration, should put it in place. “This collective faculty responsibility,” says Committee A, “includes deciding whether to adopt the use of DEI statements, what issues faculty members will be asked to address in such statements, and how such statements will be used in faculty evaluation.” In other words, the faculty gets to put the requirements to a vote.

More than members of any other profession, academics have reason to understand that they may someday be the first to grasp an unsuspected and perhaps unwelcome truth.

A clear admonition not to engage in viewpoint discrimination is wildly conspicuous by its absence. Instead, readers are told, “[c]ritically, the AAUP’s commitment to open and diverse colleges and universities exists alongside and reinforces its corresponding commitments to academic freedom, shared governance, and scholarly expertise to ensure lively campuses of diverse peoples, academic disciplines, research, and views.” Concern for academic freedom is just one of many concerns — and it is framed as a commitment of the AAUP rather than an obligation of the faculty of any particular institution.

If this seems to you like a “meh” level of interest in protecting academic freedom from a group literally named “Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” you are not alone. 

Even the strongest invocation of expressive rights found in the statement — that “faculty members have the right to engage in extramural or intramural expression criticizing any such policies” — reads more like a road map to how such dissenters can be punished: “[T]he AAUP does not consider it a violation of academic freedom per se when an appropriate larger group, such as a faculty senate or a department, collectively adopts an educational policy or goal and evaluates individual faculty members’ performance by reference to them even though they dissent.” 

Got that? Dissenters, you’re on notice.

From the outset, the AAUP had one primary and overriding goal and responsibility: Protect academic freedom. That is the very reason for the group’s existence. 

FIRE Statement on the Use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria in Faculty Hiring and Evaluation

Statements & Policies

Vague or ideologically motivated DEI statement policies can too easily function as litmus tests for adherence to prevailing ideological views on DEI.

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The organization’s origins date to an academic freedom controversy in 1896, when Stanford University professor Edward Ross raised the ire of university authorities, up to and including university co-founder Jane Stanford. His arguments for populist policies like the free coinage of silver and insistence on making political arguments angered Ms. Stanford, who demanded Ross be fired. While the university president resisted doing so, Ross and seven other professors ultimately resigned in protest. One of those professors was a man named Arthur Lovejoy, who would join famed progressive philosopher John Dewey to found the AAUP.

The new organization’s first publication was the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. This was a masterpiece that, after more than a century, still serves as the foundational text for understanding how both issues are treated in the United States. Language from it, and from the AAUP’s later 1940 Statement, is found in the policies of hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of American colleges and universities. Courts, too, look to these documents for guidance. And well they should, since some of what they wrote is so prophetic one suspects these scholars had access to a time machine. For example:

The tendency of modern democracy is for men to think alike, to feel alike, and to speak alike. Any departure from the conventional standards is apt to be regarded with suspicion. Public opinion is at once the chief safeguard of a democracy, and the chief menace to the real liberty of the individual. It almost seems as if the danger of despotism cannot be wholly averted under any form of government. In a political autocracy there is no effective public opinion, and all are subject to the tyranny of the ruler; in a democracy there is political freedom, but there is likely to be a tyranny of public opinion.

An inviolable refuge from such tyranny should be found in the university. It should be an intellectual experiment station, where new ideas may germinate and where their fruit, though still distasteful to the community as a whole, may be allowed to ripen until finally, perchance, it may become a part of the accepted intellectual food of the nation or of the world.

In contrast, the message of this week’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation” is that a scholar’s refuge from such tyranny is going to be plenty violable as long as members of the faculty are the ones doing the violating.

The AAUP’s transformation into just another political organization is highly discouraging. America needs an AAUP that is willing to go to the mat to defend professors even when they have something unpopular to say. More than members of any other profession, academics have reason to understand that they may someday be the first to grasp an unsuspected and perhaps unwelcome truth. Since 1915, the AAUP has been the traditional first stop for those who find themselves facing trouble for doing so. If the organization continues on its current course, it is hard to imagine that remaining true for much longer.