It’s easy to take free speech for granted. For University of California professors, however, the situation has become complicated.
The UC Board of Regents is set to vote Thursday on a proposed revision to the Faculty Code of Conduct that widens the definition of academic freedom to include the right to comment freely on university policies.
This proposal, brought forward by the Committee on Academic Freedom, is a necessary step to solidify protection of faculty opinions in the governance of the UC system.
But even with the change, faculty members will still walk a fine line between protected and punishable speech when they exercise their academic freedom for university policies. The ambiguity in the proposal’s phrasing could still potentially be used against faculty who speak out against university policies.
The change adds to the Faculty Code of Conduct the sentence: “Freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action when acting as a member of the faculty whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance.”
The controversy surrounds the phrase “when acting as a member of the faculty,” as it is ambiguous when a professor is actually acting as a member of the faculty. The University Committee on Faculty Welfare, a committee of the Academic Senate reporting on the economic welfare of the faculty, cited this vagueness as the reason not to endorse the change.
The proposal widens the definition of academic freedom, but it should be up to the individual campuses to craft their own guidelines to clarify when faculty members can exercise that freedom. After all, no one understands the policies and atmosphere of a university better than the administrators at each individual campus.
The ambiguity surrounding free speech for public employees dates back to a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2006.
In the case, Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Court held that when public employees make statements while on the job, they are not speaking as private citizens and the Constitution’s First Amendment does not protect their comments from employer discipline.
Although the case did not explicitly mention higher education, it did set a precedent that can be manipulated to threaten faculty’s free speech.
In 2007, UC Irvine professor Juan Hong was denied a pay raise. He brought a lawsuit to a district court against the chairperson of the chemical engineering and material science department, claiming he was denied the raise because he had spoken out against university’s policies on the hiring of professors and the use of lecturers to teach courses at UC Irvine. The university cited the Supreme Court decision to justify that the professor’s criticisms were not protected speech, and the court ruled in favor of the defendant.
If applied in other instances, this precedent could be used to severely limit the speech of professors and researchers.
Faculty members at the UC, as public employees, technically fall into the unprotected category specified by the Supreme Court. Although not specific enough, the Faculty Code of Conduct does briefly mention the faculty’s right to help manage the University.
Since institutional policies directly impact the classrooms in which faculty teach as lecturers and the laboratories in which they work as researchers, faculty should have the academic freedom to comment on these issues.
There are currently 29,992 full-time academic staff members employed by the UC system.As researchers and professors, they have a different perspective of the campuses and connect the administration with students and affiliates. For these reasons, their input is vital to the governance of each campus.
Even if the regents approve the proposal, the Committee on Academic Freedom needs to continue to discuss and create more specific guidelines that would protect faculty’s rights to comment on institutional policies.
The perspective of faculty is invaluable in the management of each campus, and the exploration of more specific guidelines to protect the free expression of faculty would build a more inclusive and productive environment for the University.