Does Academic Freedom Apply to University Administrators?

We hear a lot about academic freedom for students and faculty, but what about administrators? Len Gutkin recently explored this question in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s ‘The Review’ in a piece titled “Do administrators have academic freedom?”

It’s a largely unexplored and complicated question. In his piece, Gutkin uncovers the murkiness of administrators’ academic freedom rights. Starting with the example of Stanford Law School’s former associate dean for diversity, equity, & inclusion Tirien Steinbach, openly sympathizing with protesters during Judge Kyle Duncan’s event earlier this year, Gutkin deftly highlights the difficulty with determining how to balance an administrator’s academic freedom rights and their duties to the university.

Some arguments favor academic freedom for administrators and claim they should hold the same rights as faculty. As noted in the piece, Rutgers Law Professor Stacy Hawkins proposed expanding academic freedom to staff members because, in Dean Steinbach’s case, “[a]ll she did was counter speech with more speech.”  This argument does not seem particularly strong since Dean Steinbach’s behavior overrode her obligation as an administrator to facilitate a successful event. Even though she ultimately got the students to quiet down so that Judge Duncan could deliver his remarks, openly sympathizing with them instead of immediately setting parameters on their behavior raised questions about her primary responsibilities as an administrator in that context. 

As I’ve written before, heckling (or openly sympathizing with hecklers in real-time) is not just fighting speech with speech when the heckling results in a speaker being unable to speak. In her follow-up letter to the Stanford Law School community, Dean Jenny Martinez stated, “protest is allowed but disruption is not allowed.” Guests attending a public lecture have a reasonable expectation to hear the speaker speak, and preventing that from happening limits the overall free speech we’re entitled to.

The strongest argument in favor of protecting administrators’ academic freedom came from The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). They asserted that 

We’ve seen this play out already as administrative offices have subsumed campuses, constantly reminding us of their general distaste for open inquiry and academic freedom. Bureaucrats do not like freedom’s precariousness. Such arrangements might be what economist Art Carden has referred to as “The Bureaucratic Deal,” which he describes as

CAUT’s call to extend academic freedom to administrators could help us out of the Bureaucratic Deal but would probably only get us so far. One wonders about the selection mechanism for bureaucratic fields and whether academic freedom is even an appealing right to be obtained. In other words, people who want to be administrative bureaucrats might not typically be champions of open inquiry and free thought.

Of course, the argument isn’t so black and white. Some administrators are faculty and likely have an understanding of and appreciation for academic freedom. Gutkin highlights the example of Leonard Jeffries Jr., who, as Chair of the Black Studies department at City College of New York, drew criticism for his “conspiratorial and antisemitic statements” while on a speaking circuit. The university ultimately relieved him of his chair duties but did not fire him from his position as a faculty member. This raises the question of whether faculty member’s academic freedom extends to their roles as administrators. 

Indeed, Jeffries wondered the same thing when he sued the university on First Amendment grounds and won. After some appeals, the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that employers could fire employees for speech. Ultimately, as New York University Law Professor Stephen A. Newman argued, “Jeffries is protected from dismissal as a faculty member . . . This does not mean he is protected as chairman.” 

I think there’s something to this distinction, especially in Jeffries’ case, when his remarks were not to advance the search for truth or better understanding but instead to espouse baseless conspiracy theories untethered from any academic standards or purpose. As an administrator, Jeffries often acted and spoke on behalf of his department and university. In contrast, as a faculty member, he spoke and acted on his own behalf as a professional truth-seeker.

Still, this can be a little slippery. Including administrators and staff in the free speech and academic freedom culture would probably be beneficial. That is not to say they should be expected to engage in the same research and intellectual work as faculty. But, expanding the understanding of and appreciation for principles of academic freedom might help to weave that into the university's culture and mitigate bureaucratic interference in academic freedom in the long run. 

Ultimately, it seems appropriate to claim an administrator has academic freedom when they are joining the search for truth and new ideas. But when an administrator, acting in their official capacity, does something that runs against academic freedom or undermines their official duties, it is more difficult to claim it is being done in the name of their own academic freedoms. So it seems simpler than we first realized: Administrators should enjoy academic freedom to speak their minds and contribute to scholarly inquiry insofar as they do not undermine their official roles or impede the academic freedom of students and faculty.