BY JOHN K. WILSON

Like other blog posts by Academe Blog‘s contributing editors and guest bloggers, this blog post represents the opinion of the author and does not represent a policy position of the AAUP.

Universities such as Purdue are making plans to re-open this fall, with president Mitch Daniels citing the “close to zero lethal threat” for young people; meanwhile, older faculty and staff who face a substantially greater than zero lethal threat wonder if they can be forced to risk their lives for in-person teaching.

Does academic freedom protect the right of an individual professor to teach remotely? Academic freedom gives faculty enormous autonomy over teaching decisions, and the decision to teach remotely would seem to be one of those choices. As the AAUP notes, “The freedom to teach includes the right of the faculty to select the materials, determine the approach to the subject, make the assignments, and assess student academic performance in teaching activities for which faculty members are individually responsible, without having their decisions subject to the veto of a department chair, dean, or other administrative officer.”

The freedom to teach is primarily based on pedagogical reasons. But safety is also a relevant consideration for faculty. If faculty believe that a particular mode of teaching poses any kind of threat to themselves or to their students, those faculty have a fundamental right under academic freedom to choose teaching methods that protect everyone while still permitting the teaching of their classes.

One may wonder, if the administration has the power to order all classes to go online (as happened on every college campus this spring), then don’t they have the power to order all classes to return to in-person instruction? The answer is: No. The power to order classes online is an emergency power, a power that can only be utilized in a moment of immediate crisis for safety reasons. If the administration re-opens the campuses, then it is declaring that the crisis is over and the administration loses any claim to utilize emergency powers over faculty teaching methods. In that case, the authority to decide how classes are taught goes back to those who have always held that power: Individual professors. The AAUP recognizes a few cases where certain courses are determined by collective faculty decision-making, but for the most part individual faculty decide teaching methods for themselves. Online instruction is just another type of teaching method, and faculty get to decide its usage.

Of course, the right of faculty to determine their own teaching methods is not unlimited. Faculty have an obligation to meet professional standards and generally teach the content of the class as described. However, online teaching is not inherently a violation of professional standards. Even though many people believe that in-person instruction is, on average, superior to online instruction, this theory cannot be applied to any particular professor. Moreover, even if in-person instruction is generally better, that doesn’t mean online instruction is a violation of professional standards. If it were, colleges could not ethically take tuition money for the classes currently being taught across the country.

Faculty do have a moral obligation to inform students in advance, where possible, about their pedagogical choices. If a professor plans to teach a class online due to the ongoing threat of COVID-19, even if the administration opens up the campus, then that professor ought to give students advance notice if feasible. But ultimately, it is the professor who must make that decision.

The AAUP has noted the importance of faculty shared governance in decisions about putting all classes online, and the need to protect faculty rights during a crisis. But I think the AAUP needs to go a step further, and clearly affirm the individual right of faculty to choose for themselves how they will teach and if they will go online out of safety concerns during the COVID-19 crisis this fall.