Faculty and student senators offered many comments and questions regarding provisions of the state of Illinois’ ethics policy related to political activities – and potential infringements on free speech and academic freedom – during the Urbana-Champaign Senate’s Oct. 6 meeting. The controversy stemmed from an “Ethics Matters” electronic newsletter issued by the Ethics Office on Sept. 18.
Nicholas Burbules, chair of the Senate Executive Committee, read a mass e-mail message from President B. Joseph White, which was sent just prior to the senate meeting. White wrote that the content of the “Ethics Matters” newsletter regarding political advocacy was not a university policy statement but was a briefing intended to familiarize recipients with the provisions of the 2003 State Officials and Employees Ethics Act. “Accordingly, the Ethics Office, other members of my staff and I will work with state officials to ensure that interpretations of the Ethics Act do not restrict constitutionally guaranteed rights of state employees and, in the case of higher education and this university, academic freedom,” White wrote.
Senators’ concerns included discussions by faculty members and teaching assistants in the classroom and wearing of attire or buttons supportive of particular candidates, as well as use of university resources such as computers and the Internet to advocate for federal funding of research agencies. Associate Chancellor Peg Rawles, who responded to questions in the absence of Chancellor Richard Herman, said that White, University Counsel and the Ethics Office would be asked to clarify the definition of workplaces and appropriate use of resources.
John Prussing, an emeritus faculty member in aerospace engineering and chair of the General University Policy Committee, said that the GUP planned to meet with Donna McNeely, university ethics officer, who had indicated that the Ethics Office intended to issue a revised version of the “Ethics Matters” newsletter within the next few days.
“Whatever happens with the ethics memo, whether the University Ethics Office rewrites it or not, I believe that it’s actually important for the senate to issue some kind of statement in regard to the basic principles that underlie academic freedom, our constitutional rights as citizens and the role of active and vibrant political discourse for the education of the university,” said Ilya Kapovich, mathematics, whose remarks elicited enthusiastic applause from senators. Kapovich added that there had been “a lot of fallout, nationally and even internationally,” referring to recent media reports about the controversy and a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Burbules told senators that at least two senate committees would be discussing the matter and might bring motions or statements to the senate for a vote. “It’s also within the purview of any individual senator to write or develop a statement like that and bring it to our next meeting,” preferably having it added to the agenda before the meeting. “You don’t have to wait for senate committees to draft these things.”
Another controversy was laid to rest when Burbules announced that the UI Foundation was dissolving its agreement with the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund. The ACLG, an endowment fund created within the UIF in 2006, aroused the concerns of many faculty members, who feared that the ACLG might be allowed to circumvent shared governance and create curricula promoting the donors’ personal political ideologies, and to constrain academic freedom and free speech on campus.
The donors’ aspirations to control how their funds would be used did not fit within the shared governance structure of the university, and, accordingly, the agreement between ACLG and UIF was dissolved, Burbules said. “I also want to say that this episode has shown the strengths of shared governance on this campus at their best. There are many ways that this issue, politically charged as it is, could have gone wrong. Chancellor Herman, working closely with the senate ... and Tom Ulen and his committee members did an incredible job in advocating for the values of this university and then following through and trying to bring them to bear in revising the agreement. … He and the chancellor have served this university well, and I wish it were possible to make more public all that they have done for us.”
Burbules said that White was being invited to the senate’s Nov. 3 meeting to discuss plans for the Global Campus to earn accreditation as an independent, fourth campus and to receive senators’ feedback.