Threats to Academic Freedom

UTFA’s Winter Update email warns of growing threats to academic freedom on campus.

I agree; except that one of those threats is coming from UTFA. In the email, UTFA wrote: “While these rights are accorded to individuals, they also extend to individuals cooperating in groups.” At best, this claim is incomplete, at worst it is misleading and contradicts both university policies, CAUT’s Policy Statement on Academic Freedom, and most importantly, the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between UTFA and the administration that gives faculty and librarians, “the right to investigate, speculate, and comment without reference to prescribed doctrine” (5.1).

Academic freedom is an individual right; individuals can cooperate in groups, but only when those groups are formed voluntarily outside of official university auspices. Academic freedom does not apply to official university departments and other units. When university departments issue official statements, they violate principles of institutional neutrality that enable individuals within those departments to enjoy unhampered academic freedom. UTFA’s stance does not appear to have any basis in the MOA or university policy, and could easily be construed to empower majorities units to encroach on the academic freedom of individuals whose protections these rules are designed to protect.

There are substantial differences between UTSC’s Department of Historical and Cultural Studies’ statement on their website declaring certain research approaches to be essential and the statement issued by Dean Erica Walker of OISE on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, who clearly stated that she did not “presume to speak for all members of our community,” and whose comments on terrorism and violence always used first-person singular. Only the former violates the MOA protections against “prescribed doctrines”.

One can similarly differentiate between individual faculty members signing an open letter justifying Hamas’ attack on Israelis on October 7, and pledging to boycott Israel, when a group of faculty sign as “Scholar Strike,” and when University of Toronto’s Centre for Culture and Technology signs that same letter as an official unit. Individual faculty and librarians can choose where they want to research, apply for research funding, and attend conferences wherever they want, and can choose to avoid Israel. Any department that restrict the exercise of those same freedoms and opportunities to certain countries infringes on the freedom of individuals within their unit and violates university policy against boycotts.

University policies protect individuals from departmental limitations

All reviews of the relevant university policies on free expression begin with our university’s Statement of Institutional Purpose, which explicitly protects “individual human rights” (emphasis added), and identifies “the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research,” as crucial to a university.

Our university’s Statement on Freedom of Speech (1992), gives “all members of the University… the right to examine, question, investigate, speculate, and comment on any issue without reference to prescribed doctrine.” The 1992 Statement further proclaims: “The University must allow the fullest range of debate. It should not limit that debate by preordaining conclusions, or punishing or inhibiting the reasonable exercise of free speech.” PDAD&C #68 (2018) reiterates these principles, but also articulates protections against actions that silence or stigmatize: “Speech or other acts that silence, intimidate, or stigmatize individuals or groups stand in direct opposition to free speech and subvert the contest of ideas at the heart of the University’s mission.”

The administration’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) employs the same language as the 1992 Statement on Freedom of Speech protecting individual freedom “without reference to prescribed doctrine.” Faculty and librarians are free to pursue research and scholarship, and in making public their findings, and may do so while free from “institutional censorship.” Individuals are neither required to be neutral nor to take any stance (Article 5, Section 1). Article 9 of the MOA also protects faculty and librarians from “discrimination, interference or restriction,” based on creed, national origin, citizenship, religious or political affiliation (among other criteria).

This language was highlighted by our colleagues' Report of the Antisemitism Working Group: "academic freedom is in the first instance an individual right. It does not require neutrality on the part of the individual. The University’s broader commitment to providing a forum for freedom of speech and expression must be understood in the same way: members of the University are not required to be evenhanded or neutral on controversial questions, or to focus their attention on the questions that others might take to be most urgent.” The report further notes that the university’s commitment to academic freedom “does not protect people who express unpopular views from disagreement or criticism by other members of the University or people outside of it.” UTFA commended the report, and yet UTFA, several student unions and workers’ unions on campus demanded the university administration speak out in a way that would violate these instructions.

Supporting only an individual's right to academic freedom is not a bug in the system unique to our university. Similar language protecting individuals appears elsewhere. The CAUT Policy Statement on Academic Freedom states: “Academic staff must not be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as individuals including the right to contribute to social change through free expression of opinion on matters of public interest.”

If departments and other administrative units enjoy rights as a collection of individual voices, I find no language protecting their freedom of expression. UTFA’s leader’s assert that the collective right comes from the old description of universities as “universitas magistrorum et scholarium,” which is a set of principles about governance, not a rule for current administration. The actual rules plainly state that the university must not limit debate to preordained conclusions or prescribed doctrines. By promising that the university will refrain from stigmatizing individuals with contrary views, these policies all protect individuals from official actions, including actions taken at the departmental level. If UTFA thinks that these collegial principles need to be elevated over individual rights to academic freedom, then they are risking those individual rights.

UTFA must consistently uphold the principles of academic freedom held by our individual members. Violations of the MOA by departments are subject to the same grievance procedures as actions taken directly by Simcoe Hall. I’m distressed that UTFA has failed to speak out against the departments whose statements infringe upon academic freedoms, nearly as much as I am that the university administration has failed to step up to protect academic freedom from infringement by a handful of departments and other units. Both the university and UTFA have recently failed to uphold the MOA in regards to academic freedom. But, only the UTFA Executive asserts that there is a right for groups to exercise academic freedom without referencing where those rights appear in the MOA or any other policy statement. This nonsense threatens the rights faculty and librarians actually enjoy.