POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN

Readers of this blog may recall that shortly after the vice-presidential debate history professor Lora Burnett was hounded by trolls for Twitter comments that referred to Vice-President Pence as a “demon” and that her college administration buckled under the pressure to denounce her in a notorious October 12 statement.  I blogged about the incident (here) and Burnett herself wrote about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education (here).  Now the Faculty Council at the school has weighed in, issuing the following statement:

STATEMENT ON FACULTY INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Faculty Council supports the right of faculty, staff, and students to speak freely without fear of discipline, in accordance with their freedom of speech and academic freedom. Collin College and its administration should aim to protect faculty, staff, and students from reprisal, harassment, censorship, or interference from groups or individuals, both within and outside of the college. Faculty Council urges Collin College to publicly reaffirm its commitment to the principles of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech as already elucidated in Collin College’s Board Policies: https://www.collin.edu/hr/boardpolicies/May2020/DGCfirst.pdf and rescind the College statement of October 12, 2020.

We await a response from the Collin College administration, which should reverse its ill-considered and hasty action of October 12 and reaffirm its already existing policies on academic freedom, which pledge that the college’s Board and administration will “protect the faculty from harassment, censorship, or interference from outside groups and individuals” and not endorse or join in such pernicious efforts.