BY THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER
The following statement was issued January 29, 2024.
In 2022, American University reaffirmed its commitment to freedom of expression, stating in relevant part:
When we engage in inquiry, we may have to confront truths that are unpleasant and ideas and perspectives with which we disagree or even find loathsome. When we do so, however, it is imperative to affirm that confrontation with such truths and such perspectives is not an endorsement or validation of them. Rather, we affirm the value of inquiry, even when it is challenging, because we believe in the dignity of individuals to investigate the world for themselves and to make up their own minds about what they discover. (source)
On January 25, 2024, President Burwell and other non-academic officers at American University issued a statement announcing a policy that breaks this university’s longstanding commitment to free expression and civic engagement. The new policy they announced, which was adopted without a transparent process, faculty input, or meaningful community discussion of alternatives, threatens the core functions of this university: inquiry and good-faith dialogue. The policy explicitly targets—but does not define—student protest. Because it is vague, based on subjective or undefined terms, and gives administrators the power to punish students and groups whom they determine are not “welcoming,” the policy will have the effect of suppressing and chilling expression throughout our community. Although we share the Administration’s commitment to fighting bias and harassment, this new policy neither meaningfully advances equity nor creates accountability for bad actors; rather it makes all students less free in service of dampening political discourse.
The entire policy is rife with vague and subjective terms that could be applied unfairly. First, the policy bans “protests” without defining them. If a student wears a black armband, a historic symbol of student antiwar protest, to class, will the Administration punish the student? What if a student group collectively decides to wear symbols, statements, or depictions of a flag on a given day (example: March 1 is the Disability Community Day of Mourning; March 31 is the Transgender Day of Visibility)?
Even if defined only to include intentional in-person gatherings of students for the purpose of dissent, this protest policy unnecessarily suppresses good-faith civic engagement. Our existing policy on expression already empowers the university to bar protests that substantially disrupt academic activities. This policy is designed to, and would have the effect of, suppressing student speech that does not disrupt academic activities in service of shielding students from even seeing messages with which they disagree.
The policy also imposes a vague and subjective requirement that student clubs be “welcoming” and establishes a new layer of administrative power to enforce this requirement. We are particularly concerned that this vague provision gives administrators substantial power to determine the scope and limitations of a student club’s mission. This not only threatens students’ autonomy, as adults, to form and shape associations that are meaningful to their lives, it risks administrators imposing their own views of what is “germane” and “directly connected” to their purpose. An administrator, and not students, might decide that celebrating Christmas is germane but recognizing a geopolitical event is not. This provision would be burdensome and problematic in a high school; it is an extraordinary limitation on college students’ rights.
We object to the statement that all events sponsored by a student group must be inclusive. If “inclusive” means that public events are open to the public, then we agree. However, if inclusive means that all people attending the event must be “comfortable” and must never get upset by a perspective articulated at the meeting, then we strongly disagree. Even worse is the suggestion that all public events should present both sides of a perspective. Will a student group supporting Joe Biden be obliged to invite a pro-Trump speaker to its own meeting? Once again, we suspect that the Administration does not wish to suppress the Democratic or Republican Party, but rather student groups which they define as controversial.
Incidents of harassment, such as scrawling an anti-Jewish slogan or a swastika on a door or similar attacks on Muslims or Palestinians are already prohibited by our conduct code and by federal and local laws. The university’s own failure to find the perpetrators of past events must not be used as an excuse to suppress the freedoms of our entire student body.
Finally, we close with two observations on the continuing failure of the Administration to commit itself to shared governance. First: for nearly a century if not longer, higher education in the United States has prided itself as being a place where students can advocate for controversial political ideas and demonstrate their commitments. Many of us participated in student protests when we were undergraduate and graduate students. This engagement is an important part of the academic life of any university. Thus, it is shocking that the university administration did not attempt to get approval for this policy from the Provost or consult with the leadership of the Faculty Senate. The second observation is that once again the Administration is responding to a problem by hiring a new administrator. We view this as a wasteful use of resources. Worse, such attempts to hire ever more faculty administrators makes it even more difficult to establish a more inclusive and effective method of university governance.
For all these reasons, we urge President Burwell to withdraw the previous memorandum and work with the faculty to protect student political engagement while ensuring that all students can thrive on our American University campus.
Additional signatories: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wZW69SBJVrvLSswQmlWuEfqZw8q73b8zU3I-AVjcZW8/edit?usp=sharing
To sign this statement, go here: https://forms.gle/g9J7YaRKf1EeWrQ19
Image by Samschoe via Wikimedia Commons, licensed according to Creative Commons.
The actual content of the new policies–no indoor demonstrations, no extraneous exclusionary membership requirements (like banning Zionists or pro-Palestinians from anti sexual harassment clubs), and limiting posting materials on university owned spaces to relevant information about university approved events–don’t strike me as heavy handed attempts to crush student dissent and academic freedom. It would be far better had the faculty senate sponsored these policies, but the procedural issue is different from the contents of the policies and the contents hardly justify the hysterical response that we see here. Indoor demonstrations disrupting classes and agitation for violence against members of the university community (“globalize the intifada”) are far greater threats to academic freedom and the proper functioning of a university than the policies just adopted by the AU administration.