BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT

The case of Jay Smith, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor whose course on college athletics was quashed by university administrators, has received considerable attention because it raises serious questions about academic freedom. Yet, as recent events attest, the case is also important on shared governance grounds. Specifically, it sheds light on the fragility of grievance hearing processes.

A quick review of the facts: Jay Smith maintains that UNC administrators tried to prevent him from teaching a course he developed on college athletics. Smith has long been an outspoken critic of the way his university handled its notorious athletics-academics scandal. Several administrators, he contends, pressured his chair and even threatened to deprive the department of resources if the course was placed on the books (Smith presented a detailed account of his story in this 2017 article published in Academe).

Though the university backed down and allowed Smith to teach his class, he took the matter to faculty grievance committee, on the grounds that UNC policies ensuring academic freedom had been violated.

Last October, UNC’s faculty grievance committee issued a report that sided with Smith. The report, available here, is in many ways a model of the high quality work faculty grievance committees can do. The committee’s conclusion is based on three observations:

1. Smith’s course “received an extraordinary amount of attention from the Dean and Senior Associate Dean.”

2. Smith’s department chair “interpreted the attention focused on [his course] by the Dean and the Senior Associate Dean as pressure to keep [the course] off of the regular academic schedule.”

3. “The pressure placed on the Department Chair by College administrators to keep [Smith’s course] off of the regular academic schedule was inconsistent with the University’s commitment to academic freedom and with the Department’s traditional deference to course selection decisions made by its faculty.”

The grievance committee noted that UNC’s administrators justify their decision by claiming that they have a responsibility to ensure that the university meet its educational goals. The administrators’ only objection to Smith’s course, they insist, is that in order to teach it, he had to cancel a low-enrolled course in the philosophy of history that contributed to UNC’s honors curriculum.

Yet the grievance committee noted that because UNC generally offers around 70 honors courses per semester, the committee observed that “it was extremely unusual” for deans “to scrutinize the elimination of a single honors course in a single department.” The committee further stated that the claim that “the addition of one course out of the thousands offered by the College each semester would threaten the College’s long-term strategic goals strains credulity.”

The grievance committee concluded that the attempt to quash Smith’s course “was the result of pressure by senior College administrators and was inconsistent with the course scheduling practices of the History Department and the University’s commitment to academic freedom.”

As a remedy, the grievance committee requested that relevant administrators adhere, in the future, to the following principles: “But University officials should not interfere in individual course selection decisions made by department officials nor should they pressure department officials in favor of or against particular courses. University officials should not state or imply that a department will lose financial resources or otherwise suffer negative consequences if it were to approve a particular course, so long as in the aggregate the department is consistently supporting the University’s strategic goals.”

Yet UNC Provost Robert Blouin and Chancellor Carol Folt simply rejected the committee’s findings. When Smith appealed to the Board of Trustees, they backed the chancellor.

Furthermore, after Smith wrote a critical editorial about his experience for the Wall Street Journal on May 1, Chancellor Folt retaliated by releasing to the public a number of documents relating to the case. Whatever the intention of this decision, it did little more than show how blatantly the administration ignored the grievance committee’s finding.

When Smith wrote another op-ed defending himself in the Raleigh News & Observer, a UNC spokesperson defended the university’s position by stating: “There is no evidence to suggest any undue pressure, harassment or influence was exerted on anyone regarding the scheduling or teaching of [Smith’s course].” This statement brazenly ignores the fact that grievance committee did find such evidence, and seems, moreover, to claim for administrators the right not only to reject the grievance committee’s recommendations (which it has the right to do, according to university rules), but also to decree its own version of the facts as the truth.

Faculty grievance committees are vital to shared governance. As the Smith case demonstrates, faculty need to be vigilant to ensure that administrators honor the spirit, and not merely the letter of these procedures.

Guest blogger Michael C. Behrent is Vice President of the North Carolina AAUP Conference.