Dear Members of the Miami University Board of Trustees:

In April, Miami University Senate voted overwhelmingly to support SR 18-11, a resolution that—if you approve it—will update MUPIM 5.1, Miami's academic freedom statement, to ensure that Miami’s commitment to academic freedom remains meaningful and viable. See full text of the revisions below, and please confirm Senate’s decision to support SR 18-11.

MUPIM 5.1 is a robust—but outdated—statement on academic freedom. It is essential that Miami (and ideally all universities) maintain strong policies on academic freedom. Academic freedom is what allows students and faculty to engage in debate and knowledge-production without fear of censorship or retaliation. Our larger society is informed by knowledge generated and shared by universities. Thus, academic freedom is essential to a thriving intellectual culture.

Back in 1950, when Miami’s academic freedom statement was adopted, freedom at our universities and in our democracy was under fire. McCarthyism was leading some institutions to require loyalty pledges from faculty. The 1950 Miami Board of Trustees must have been aware of the looming threat to the learning environment and the common good that restrictions on academic freedom presented. To their great credit, they acted to protect the university with MUPIM 5.1, a robust statement in support of academic freedom. Miami's Love & Honor code didn't exist yet, but the 1950 Trustees would have approved of our pledge to “defend the freedom of inquiry that is the heart of learning.”

But MUPIM 5.1 no longer applies to most faculty at Miami. The policy explicitly associates academic freedom with tenure. That made sense at the time, when a large majority of faculty at Miami were on the tenure track (even as late as 2001, 79% of Miami faculty were tenure-line). But the 1950 board could not have predicted that by 2018, fewer than half of Miami faculty would be on the tenure track. They would be surprised, perhaps shocked, to learn that Miami students take a significant majority (about 60% of credit hours offered) of their courses from non-tenure-track faculty who lack academic freedom protections.

When more than half of total faculty can be dismissed or not renewed without cause or right of appeal, the due process rights that underpin academic freedom are being significantly eroded. And that erosion is happening, unfortunately, at a time of significant changes in our society. As President Crawford said of the Love & Honor Code’s commitment to free inquiry: “Inquiry must be free to challenge established ideas and seek new answers, especially in an environment of disruption and rapid change.” We are once again in need of a strong and forward-thinking Board of Trustees that recognizes the value of academic freedom for a open and rigorous learning environment and a free society.

Members of the Board of Trustees, we ask you maintain Miami’s tradition of academic freedom—a commitment enshrined in our Love & Honor code and engraved on the outside wall of Upham Hall. The wall of Upham quotes a poem, “Ode to the American Universities,” written by the then-famous poet Percy Mackaye while he was poet-in-residence at Miami a few years after World War I. In the poem, Percy Mackaye calls American universities “gunless fortresses of freedom.” Mackaye’s fortress metaphor is apt. Academic freedom needs to be defended by due process protections if it is to thrive. But for some years here at Miami, the fortress walls have been decaying.

Trustees, we ask you to recall the legacy of the Board of 1950—how they worked to defend and protect academic freedom at Miami at a time when, as now, it is under threat. Support SR 18-11 and make Miami’s commitment to academic freedom robust and meaningful again.

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The texts of SR 18-11 and MUPIM 5.1 (with proposed revisions italicized and bolded) are below for your reference.

SR 18-11
Sense-of-the-Senate
April 30, 2018

Whereas Miami’s academic freedom statement (MUPIM 5.1) firmly associates academic freedom protections with tenure,
Whereas in 1950, when the statement was adopted, the board could not have predicted that seventy years later, the majority of faculty would lack due-process protections,
MUPIM 5.1 shall be amended to clarity academic freedom protections at Miami and ensure that they are robust. Two statements will be added after the penultimate paragraph.

1. The institution thus commits to the teacher-scholar model and seeks to preserve and, whenever possible, increase the ratio of tenure-line faculty to non-tenure line faculty.

2. Where provisions for tenure do not exist, the university will work to ensure academic freedom by establishing due process protections, longer terms of employment opportunities for advancement through ranks, recognition of seniority, and conscientious peer evaluation.

SR 18-11 was passed by voice vote.
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MUPIM 5.1: Principles of Academic Freedom

The following statement of principles of academic freedom adopted by the American Association of University Professors in 1940 was approved by the Board of Trustees, June of 1950:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. (The word “teacher” as used in this document is understood to include the investigator who is attached to an academic institution without teaching duties.)

Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights.

Tenure is a means to certain ends, specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society. The institution thus commits to the teacher-scholar model and seeks to preserve and, whenever possible, increase the ratio of tenure-line faculty to non-tenure line faculty. Where provisions for tenure do not exist, the university will work to ensure academic freedom by establishing due process protections, longer terms of employment opportunities for advancement through ranks, recognition of seniority, and conscientious peer evaluation.

No faculty member shall be obliged to make her or his nonpublic work available for inspection by a second party in the absence of compulsory legal process.
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Sincerely,