The statement has already been widely praised by faculty members at Syracuse and elsewhere.  The praise is richly merited.  Indeed, this is precisely a model of how a university administration should appropriately respond to such attacks on faculty members when they make controversial statements — with a full-throated defense of a professor’s right to speak out on public issues and of that professor’s safety.  If only more administrators were this responsible.

What is also striking about this statement is what is not in it: any comment about, much less condemnation of, what the faculty member said.  In a July 2019 post to this blog, I wrote:

Each time a college or university administrator publicly passes judgment on behalf of the institution on the extramural expression of an individual faculty member, that administrator effectively takes an “official” position on the issue at hand.  If this becomes a habit, it is not very difficult to see the problems ahead.

As a general rule, all public comments made by faculty members as citizens, whether controversial, indisputable, or merely innocuous, never “represent” the institution.  That should always be clear.  Hence an administration need not, and in many, perhaps most, cases should not publicly criticize its faculty’s controversial views.

In that post I argued that there are some cases, pretty infrequent, in which the comments are not only controversial but run counter to “certain fundamental institutional commitments central to fulfillment of higher education’s mission,” where a disclaimer might be appropriate, provided it is placed in the context of a defense of academic freedom.  Clearly, however, this was not such a case.  Faculty members are entitled to think what they wish about 9/11 or any other public controversy; their institutions have no need either to condemn or to endorse their views.

This was not the first time that Chancellor Syverud took such a principled stance.  When in 2017 a Syracuse faculty member was subjected to an online mob attack after a provocative tweet, Syverud forcefully rejected calls for her dismissal while refusing to comment at all on the content of her expression.  In April 2019 I was on a panel with Syverud where he declared that in cases where faculty members are targets of harassment it is critical that administrators defend their academic freedom without recourse to criticism of their views, however controversial or even distasteful to the administrator.  At the time I invited Syverud to post his excellent comments on this blog; I now reiterate that invitation.

In September 2017, the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities issued a joint statement, “Taking a Stand Against Harassment, Part of the Broader Threat to Higher Education,” which, invoking Chancellor Syverud’s 2017 stance, declared:

. . . campaigns of harassment endanger more than the faculty member concerned.  They pose a profound and ominous challenge to higher education’s most fundamental values.  The right of faculty members to speak or write as citizens, free from institutional censorship or discipline, has long been recognized as a core principle of academic freedom.  While colleges and universities must make efforts to provide learning environments that are welcoming, diverse, and safe for all members of the university community and their guests, these efforts cannot and need not come at the expense of the right to free expression of all on campus and the academic freedom of the faculty.

We therefore call on college and university leaders and members of governing boards to reject outside pressures to remove or discipline faculty members whose ideas or commentary may be provocative or controversial and to denounce in forceful terms these campaigns of harassment.  Some have already taken such a stance.  The response of Syracuse University chancellor Kent Syverud to calls for the denunciation or dismissal of a professor who posted a controversial tweet is exemplary.  “No,” he said.  “We are and will remain a university.  Free speech is and will remain one of our key values.  I can’t imagine academic freedom or the genuine search for truth thriving here without free speech.  Our faculty must be able to say and write things—including things that provoke some or make others uncomfortable—up to the very limits of the law.”

Unfortunately, other administrations have been more equivocal in their responses, in a few cases disciplining the faculty member concerned while remaining silent about the terrifying harassment to which that faculty member has been subjected.  Some offer hollow homilies in support of the free speech rights of outside speakers while failing to defend the rights of harassed faculty.  Often administrators justify their response by appealing to legitimate concerns for the safety of the community.  However, anything short of a vigorous defense of academic freedom will only further imperil safety.  Concessions to the harassers send the message that such odious tactics are effective. They have a chilling effect on the entire academic community.  Academic leaders are therefore obligated to recognize that attacks on the academic freedom of individual instructors pose a risk to the institution as a whole and to the very project of higher education as a public good.  As the AAUP’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities stressed, the protection the college or university “offers to an individual or a group is, in fact, a fundamental defense of the vested interests of society in the educational institution.”

Once again, Syracuse University and its Chancellor have shown the way.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and president of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019.  His Understanding Academic Freedom will be published in October.