University professors have formed a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, seeking academic freedom in higher education.
Sara McDaniel, a professor in the Department of Special Education and Multiple Abilities, serves as the chapter’s president. Richard Fording, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the UA System Board of Trustees and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, regarding Senate Bill 129, is its vice president. As of publication, 22 faculty members have joined the chapter.
The chapter’s goal, McDaniel said, is to educate students and faculty on concepts critical to higher education, including academic freedom, institutional neutrality and shared governance.
The group’s formation comes as UA professors in the lawsuit challenging SB 129 have claimed that they have faced new teaching restrictions since the law’s implementation.
McDaniel said one student complained about a faculty member from the AAUP chapter after the professor taught a lesson on national discipline trends and the intersection of race, saying “professors aren’t allowed to teach those topics anymore” and faculty have been asked to remove terms like “inclusion.”
“People come to institutions of higher education to gain knowledge and hear different perspectives. That’s the point,” McDaniel said, adding that she and her colleagues have the right to free speech, and that SB 129, which prohibits public funding of DEI programs and restricts teachers from requiring students to agree to a list of “divisive concepts,” is conflicting, vague and “ultimately wrong.”
Luke Herrine, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and a member of the newly formed AAUP chapter, emphasized the importance of academic freedom and the need for organized faculty efforts like the AAUP to protect it.
He said the AAUP was originally founded to prevent faculty members from being terminated for expressing their views, and supports the formation of a chapter at the University to help faculty participate in University governance and collectively define academic freedom.
“The law school has been quite supportive of academic freedom,” Herrine said. “Some of the things that I’ve heard about happening in other departments are not the sort of thing that happened at the law school, at least not yet.”
He acknowledged the legal tension between faculty member’s rights as citizens and their role as educators, saying they have a responsibility to pursue truth, but they can also be restricted from teaching outside their domain. The legal boundary between those roles, he said, is “not fully settled.”
Herrine said that joining the AAUP is “absolutely essential” for faculty to respond collectively to political and legal challenges.
“Do you want to be a snowflake and not learn anything about the world?” Herrine said. “Or do you want to learn from people who are experts in how the world works and then be able to ask hard questions about it?”
Nirmala Erevelles, professor of Social and Cultural Studies in the College of Education, said the opportunity to form an AAUP chapter is a blessing because academic freedom is in jeopardy, especially for younger faculty who aren’t tenured.
Erevelles said the AAUP is a space for the faculty to come together and discuss controversial topics, or ”things that are now contested” and wants the University and state legislators to trust and respect the professionalism of the University faculty. She said she does not see the chapter as antagonistic to the University but wants to collaborate.
Erevelles said that while the University has emphasized the need about certain topics “objectively,” it would be more appropriate for the University to defend the capacity for professors to articulate and engage in critical issues and enable students to actually ask questions, discuss and engage with these issues in a critical manner.
“There is privilege and oppression, and that’s history,” she said. “Even if I do endorse it, I tell my students they do not have to. My classroom is not a church. Anything I say can be contested, and anything you say can be contested.” However, she said she now pauses during class in order to choose her words carefully.
“I’m not one of the most popular professors, but nobody has accused me of taking away their grades because they disagreed with me,” she said.
University President Stuart Bell said in a July 23, 2024 statement that faculty, staff, and students “will continue to engage in free speech, exercise academic freedom, and join in wide-ranging thought and discussion on issues that impact our world.”
According to the University’s SB 129 guidance page, the law “specifically protects each faculty member’s academic freedom to provide instruction in all academic settings.”
“The teaching or discussion of any ‘divisive concept’ must be done in an objective manner, without endorsement,” according to the guidelines, advising faculty to use evidence-based methods and include content warnings in syllabi.
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