Dive Brief:
- A recent spate of death threats against college professors is causing anxiety for institutions about how to maintain central tenets of academic freedom and campus safety, according to Inside Higher Ed. The American Associations of University Professors is calling on institutional leaders to do more to defend embattled professors.
- Many believe that the “core values” of higher education are endangered by websites that target professors for their ideological leanings and statements, allegedly using many of the latter out-of-context. Some are worried that the recent threats of violence and harassment are leading faculty to “self-censor.”
- Some campuses have even be forced to shut down due to the threats. Matthew Hughey, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, said that many of the harassment cases were in responses to comments or thoughts by professors on the issue of race.
Dive Insight:
The potential chilling of speech by college professors in response to threats of harassment and violence was accompanied by numerous defenses from college administrators, ranging from the half-hearted to the vociferous. Adjunct professors and non-tenured professors are at greater risk for negative professional ramifications if they say something that could be considered controversial or offensive. A report on how professors’ social media use can impact their professional careers illustrated how college presidents and administrators were put in difficult positions defending the professor’s work and speech against a rapidly growing, opinionated collection of stakeholders.
Additionally, more and more instances of professors being fired or put on leave over comments made online are arising across the country. There are fewer tenure track professor positions at schools across the country, meaning increasingly, professors are limited in the kinds of free speech protections faculty members once enjoyed. Not only that, but in some states, moves to gut the protections offered by tenure are leaving many concerned. Efforts such as those in Wisconsin, where the Board of Regents for the state’s public university system amended tenure regulations last year to broaden the reasons for which a tenured professor could be removed, are detrimental to the academic enterprise.