Academic Freedom and an important favor

(it takes five seconds!)

Photo Credit Liz Bell/EdNC

In the photo above, Dr. Miguel Cardona, who served as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Education under President Biden, is speaking to a large room of educators at NC State about multilingual learning in public schools. In the audience were faculty, education students, public school teachers, and community members who understand both the challenges and rewards of the classroom. Here I am with my colleague, Professor of History David Ambaras:

Dr. Cardona’s central message is that bilingualism has too long been seen in our country as a deficit, when in reality it makes students career-ready and college-ready, an asset to their communities. He argues that we should understand bilingualism or multilingualism as a superpower, and prepare our public school teachers to support it with more agency, better working conditions, and better pay. As Education Secretary, he supported and helped spread the seal of biliteracy, which recognizes high school graduates who speak and write in more than one language, to all fifty states.

It was an uplifting and informative speech that I felt privileged to hear.

Yet speeches and events like this are in danger at all public universities in North Carolina because of an unnecessary, hasty, partisan rewrite of what is known as academic freedom, or the freedom of teachers and researchers at colleges and universities to do the work of educating students and advancing knowledge in their fields. We do this by investigating contentious subjects and by exposing our students to established, new, and sometimes unpopular ideas. This is how new knowledge is created, from medical breakthroughs to pedagogical principles and strategies.

This open exchange of ideas relies on faculty expertise and faculty governance. It depends on freedom from outside or governmental interference, which could discourage or prevent even those who understand and even contribute to rigorously researched, established ideas (climate change is real, multilingualism is an asset) from exposing our students to the work they came to our universities to study in the first place. It could keep professors like Maria Coady, Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Education and Professor of Multilingual Education at NC State, from bringing educators like Dr. Cardona to the university.

The code revisions (you can read them here) include new “parameters” that have many faculty like myself worried about how things will go when and if they are passed. One of these states that academic freedom does not include “using university resources for political or ideological advocacy.”

Dr. Cardona advocated, to a room full of teachers, for better teacher pay. He said, “In this country, we’ve normalized that teachers make 24% less than people with similar degrees in other professions.” This is factual, but some would consider it ideological. One could take a “reasoned exception” (another idea in the new Code revision) to the idea that teachers should make more money by stating that they are “ten-month employees” or “stop work at 3PM” (all the teachers laugh bitterly). Not to mention his discussion of his own background, or the real struggles faced by English language learners in underfunded schools and classrooms.

But you can do something to help! Today, you can sign our AAUP NC petition, which we will carry to the UNC System Board of Trustees on February 26. It asks that the Board of Governors reject this rewrite.

NC friends, you are all part of the UNC system. If you live outside the state but went to a UNC school or hope your kids or grandkids might one day go to a UNC school, you are part of the system too. And I promise I would not use this space to ask you to sign a petition if I did not think it would make a difference. This week, in fact, we have the ability to influence, if not the unnecessary adoption of a new definition, then the vague and concerning language within it. Please help us get to 3,000 signatures by signing and sharing with friends who also want us to maintain strong public universities in North Carolina.

Here is the petition language:

The UNC System Board of Governors will vote to amend the UNC System Code with new restrictions on academic freedom at its February 26 meeting.

This change is part of a broader effort to limit open inquiry and debate in higher education. Within the last two years: the UNC System stripped instructors of their intellectual property rights to syllabi; UNC-CH administrators failed to renew a professor’s contract after secretly recording his class; and outside actors have threatened instructors online and in-person because they dislike the topics being taught.

Now, the Board of Governors plans to rewrite the very definition of academic freedom, restricting what faculty can say and do in their classrooms and in public.

These revisions to the UNC System Code will chill speech on campus and lead to more retaliation against faculty teaching or discussing politically contentious topics. The imprecise language in this policy will open the UNC System to lawsuits when faculty are retaliated against or fired.

It is easy to feel despondent in the face of attacks on our institutions, but we have the opportunity and the responsibility to act and make our opposition clear.

At the upcoming meeting on February 26, we will deliver a petition to the Board of Governors to reject this policy rewrite. We will meet in Raleigh to show that we will not stand by as this board threatens the core mission of our beloved UNCs.

Sign and share this petition!

Thank you for always coming through, Frog Troublers!

For those of you in Asheville, Sylvester and I will talk about The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw at Malaprop’s Books on Tuesday, February 17 at 6PM. The research on undertold histories that we do—the very existence of UNC Press, which published our book—is part of the academic freedom so many of us are trying to protect. We’d love to see you there.

How are you spending your Sunday, Frog Troublers? I have a lot of work to do but am excited to do a backwards adventure walk along the river with friends in town from New York!