Source: https://www.aaup.org/report/protecting-independent-faculty-voice-academic-freedom-after-garcetti-v-ceballos
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:44:50+00:00

Document:
Most faculty may be unaware that a recent Supreme Court decision, Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), and several subsequent lower-court rulings applying that decision to higher education pose a serious threat to academic freedom and the ability of faculty in public institutions to participate freely in academic governance. The seriousness of this threat led the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to form a subcommittee to examine the potential impact of the Garcetti decision and to suggest actions to be taken in both public and private colleges and universities to preserve academic freedom even in the face of judicial hostility or indifference. Because of the length and detailed legal analysis of its report, the subcommittee has also prepared this executive summary to make its general findings more readily accessible and to highlight its call for action outside the limited confines of the courts. The full report begins with an overview of the historical development of the principle of academic freedom in the United States. It then provides a substantial analysis of the legal precedents concerning both academic freedom, in particular, and the more general limits on the free speech rights of public employees, the issue addressed in the Garcetti case, before concluding with a series of recommended steps that faculty and administrators should take to safeguard academic freedom.
By the late 1930s, the principles of academic freedom in teaching, research, and publication had become generally accepted in most of public and nondenominational private higher education, and they were codified in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the joint formulation of the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities). This development occurred outside the context of the law and the constitutional right to free speech.
One aspect of academic freedom asserted in the 1940 Statement is the role of the faculty member in institutional life as a citizen or an “officer” of the institution. The academic freedom of a faculty member pertains to both (1) speech or action taken as part of the institution’s governing and decision-making processes (for example, within a faculty committee or as part of a grievance filing) and (2) speech or action that is critical of institutional policies and of those in authority and takes place outside an institution’s formal governance mechanisms (such as e-mail messages sent to other faculty members). In its 1994 statement On the Relationship of Faculty Governance to Academic Freedom, the AAUP affirmed the inextricable connection between academic freedom in teaching and research and the free and effective participation of faculty in institutional governance.
Although the principle of academic freedom developed outside the law, beginning in the 1950s the Supreme Court began to interpret the First Amendment to include some protections for academic freedom for faculty at public institutions. In Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), a majority of the Court recognized academic freedom as a First Amendment interest. The subcommittee report emphasizes, however, that such protection did not extend to private institutions, since First Amendment protections apply only to restrictions on speech by arms of government. Moreover, the First Amendment protections provided to faculty at public institutions, while often quite helpful, never fully incorporated the AAUP’s understanding of the scope of academic freedom.
Soon after the Keyishian ruling, the Supreme Court began to hand down a series of decisions addressing public employee speech more broadly. In Pickering v. Board of Education (1968), the Court strengthened the free speech rights of public employees by qualifying the long-standing legal doctrine that the First Amendment did not restrain the government when it functioned as an employer. That doctrine had been encapsulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1892, when he stated that a policeman “may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.” In Pickering, a case decided in favor of a public employee’s free speech rights, the Supreme Court balanced the interests of a public employee “as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern,” against “the interests of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” In subsequent decisions regarding public employee speech prior to Garcetti, the Court began to limit employee speech protection to a more restricted definition of matters of “public concern,” so Garcetti ought not to have been a total surprise.
The threat to academic freedom implicit in Garcetti’s pinched reading of public employees’ free speech rights became explicit in three subsequent lower-court decisions. In Hong v. Grant (2007), a district judge, citing Garcetti and ignoring the Supreme Court’s reservation for speech related to teaching and research, ruled that the University of California “is entitled to unfettered discretion when it restricts statements an employee makes on the job and according to his professional responsibilities.” Such responsibilities included participation in institutional governance. Appeals courts in both Renken v. Gregory (2008) and Gorum v. Sessoms (2009) adopted similarly restrictive interpretations of faculty free speech rights. As of this writing, the Hong decision is on appeal, and the AAUP has filed an amicus brief.
Based on its review of relevant cases, the subcommittee report reiterates the imperative of making the case for academic freedom at both public and private institutions, not as a matter of law, but as a principle vital to the effective functioning of institutions of higher learning. While supporting efforts to shape the law through amicus curiae briefs, the report focuses on how the academic community can best preserve and protect academic freedom in light of the threat posed by the post- Garcetti legal context. The report urges faculty groups to minimize the dangers of recent court rulings and avert their recurrence, including through efforts to make administrators and governing boards aware of the risks to institutional health and to higher education generally if they use the Hong-Renken-Gorum doctrine to curtail intramural faculty speech.
Academic freedom is the freedom to teach, both in and outside the classroom, to conduct research and to publish the results of those investigations, and to address any matter of institutional policy or action whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance. Professors should also have the freedom to address the larger community with regard to any matter of social, political, economic, or other interest, without institutional discipline or restraint, save in response to fundamental violations of professional ethics or statements that suggest disciplinary incompetence.

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