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Posts tagged as “free speech”

UO Senate to reiterate Academic Freedom policies, then use them to hear from Union on salaries

Thanks to our UAUO Faculty Union, the Senate, Michael Dreiling (sociology) and John Bonine (law) UO’s policies were already much stronger than the oversold and poorly written “Chicago Principles”, in that they give the faculty, and all UO employees, explicit protection to criticize the university administration.

Former President Gottfredson’s failed efforts – with the collaboration of then Senate President Margie Paris (law) – to keep this protection out of the policy under the guise of promoting “civility” earned him one of many critical news reports, this one in Inside Higher Ed:

The union’s proposed statement is similar to existing policy, calling free inquiry and free speech “essential components” of academic freedom. The statement is also more expansive, and includes language guaranteeing faculty the “right to engage in internal criticism, which encompasses the freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action, whether or not as a member of any agency of institutional governance.”

The Senate passed this despite Gottfredson and Paris’s efforts, and in the wake of the alleged basketball gang-rape coverup Gottfredson signed it shortly before the Trustees fired him.

So it’s disappointing but not surprising to hear the rumors down at the faculty club that Sandy Weintraub, the JH administrator charged by Pres Scholz with keeping the Senate in line, tried to keep the Faculty Union’s presentation about uncompetitive UO salaries off the agenda – on the same day that the Senate will take up a recommendation from our accreditors at the NWCCU, led by former OSU administrator Sony Ramaswamy, that UO consolidate and reiterate its academic freedom policies.

General Counsel Kevin Reed is already dealing with one lawsuit claiming that UO violated the First Amendment by blocking a critic from commenting on DEI’s twitter feed – does he really want another? I guess not, since the Union is on the agenda:

March 13, 2024 Senate Meeting Agenda:

Grad student union unequivocally condemns University for hosting speaker

Turning Point is a well-funded right-wing agit-prop group that regularly tries to get me to repost links to their poorly written and researched stories about left-wing agit-prop professors, e.g. a recent one about the fact that no UO faculty give money to Republican candidates. (The $5K that Chuck Lillis gave…

UO administration removes CO2 Divest banner from Johnson Hall bush

10/10/2018: Reposted for the historical record.

When you’re running down our First Amendment, you’re walking on the fightin side of me:

4/6/2016 update: The day Merle Haggard died? Have our administrators no sense of patriotism? Or irony? More on the troubling response from the UO Foundation CIO here.

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3/29/2016 update: Press Conference on the Johnson Hall steps, Facebook event page here.

Our students have been conducting a quiet CO2 Divestment sit-in the Johnson Hall lobby for months. The administration has banned their banner from the bush outside JH, and now the students are apparently going to reassert their free-speech rights.

Do they have the right to put up the banner? I’m no lawyer, but here’s some UO history. Back in 2010, former UO GC Randy Geller wanted to change UO policy to implement “Free Speech Zones”, outside of which First Amendment rights would be tightly controlled. This was in reaction to the Pacifica Forum incidents. Geller’s policy starts on page 13 here. It’s funnier than Animal Farm.

Free speech is indispensable, but:

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UO will restrict Free Speech, except inside the Free Speech Zones, and even then you’ll need insurance and maybe a reservation:

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No unapproved banners outside free speech zones – and don’t even think about posting the video on the internets:

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Oh yeah, no camping or chalk either. Chalk? What’s that about?

All of Geller’s silly language above was rejected by the UO Senate and it is not UO policy. 

The Facilities Use Policy that was adopted instead is at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/04-facilities/facilities-scheduling. It turned Geller’s policy on its ass, by limiting the areas UO can control to buildings and “scheduled outdoor spaces” i.e. the EMU amphitheater. The Senate rejected all of Geller’s anti-free speech, anti-banner, and anti-chalk language.

The Facilities Use policy is paired with the powerful Free Speech and Inquiry policy, at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/01-administration-and-governance/freedom-inquiry-and-free-speech:

Free speech is central to the academic mission and is the central tenet of a free and democratic society. The University encourages and supports open, vigorous, and challenging debate across the full spectrum of human issues as they present themselves to this community. Further, as a public institution, the University will sustain a higher and more open standard for freedom of inquiry and free speech than may be expected or preferred in private settings.

How much clearer could this be? It’s not like the CO2 Divestment students are doing anything reprehensible, like using chalk.

3/13/2016: UO bans students’ fossil fuel divestment banner from a bush?

Student Conduct Committee discusses Senate’s Student Collective Resolution

This is the committee that the Board of Trustees established to replace the former Senate committee, when they took power for student discipline away from the faculty back in 2015. Its mission: The Student Conduct Committee shall be responsible for recommending to the Board of Trustees of the University of…

Student Conduct Office drops charges after FIRE free-speech investigation

11/28/2017: Just thought I’d repost this classic. 8/26/14: Four word joke nets UO student five unconstitutional bad-conduct charges: Saul Hubbard has an excellent report on this in the RG. Peter Bonilla of FIRE notes: “Universities have never prevailed in court when defending their [anti-free speech] codes,” he said. “Every single time there’s…

Student protesters of Pres Schill’s speech unlikely to take guilty plea offer

10/2/2017:   Yesterday three of the students who received discipline letters (copy below) talked to the Senate about why  they were going to fight the student conduct charges, rather than plead guilty and accept the administration’s rather mild punishment – a meeting with administrators and a note in their permanent record.…

Law prof Nancy Shurtz in the Oregonian on Halloween, free speech, diversity

UO Law Professor Nancy Shurtz has some hard-won and interesting thoughts on the intersection of Halloween, free speech, and diversity in her op-ed here. …Halloween costumes have also been a hot-button issue on college campuses in recent times, brought into the fore by the case of Yale University lecturer Erika Christakis…

President Schill’s free-speech op-ed in NYT skips over blackface, silencing of Duck athletes, efforts to stop peaceful sit-ins

The NYT op-ed focuses on the “UO Student Coalition’s” efforts to prevent him from giving his State of the University address. Information on the administration’s botched attempt to discipline the student protestors is here. Information on his administration’s treatment of Prof Nancy Shurtz for her stupid and offensive – but…

Law dean who attacked Schill’s response to blackface incident gives nuanced view of best response to disruption of Schill’s State of Univ speech

Back in January, Erwin Chemerinsky, a well known legal scholar and at the time the UC-Irvine law school dean, published this opinion piece castigating UO President Mike Schill’s response to the Halloween blackface incident: Worries about offensiveness threaten free speech on campuses All too often campuses are forgetting one of the…

Admin declares student protester guilty, then starts conduct code investigation

10/17/2017 update:

I’m no law professor, but I think this is the reverse of the preferred sequencing.

Page down for the video of UO spokesperson Tobin Klinger last Friday, declaring that “the demonstration actually violated university policy”.  Today the “UO Student Collective” facebook page posts this message from Sandy Weintraub, Director of Student Conduct, calling one of the students into his office to begin the process of an investigation under the student conduct code:

On Oct 15, Senate President Sinclair wrote UO President Schill the following:

Dear President Schill:

I’ve had a number of conversations around campus with both students and faculty regarding the student protest of the State of the University address.

Here are some reflections:

The statement from Tobin Klinger to the Oregonian  that the protest was in violation of the student conduct code is unhelpful and has irritated many faculty. Faculty see Klinger as an un-academic public relations spokesperson who has little credibility with the students or the faculty. However, he is an official spokesperson, and so we assume he was speaking for the administration. As such his statement could be taken as an abrogation of due process. This removes the veil of faculty oversight of student discipline, and there is simmering resentment that this power was taken from faculty by the Board of Trustees. Any unilateral administrative establishment of discipline on an issue that revolves around speech is a hornets nest that is best left un-kicked. We do understand that it may sometimes be necessary to “read the riot act” to students to notify them (or others) that continued assembly will be dealt with under the student conduct code.

My recommendation would be to have Tobin clarify his remarks and to state publicly that the university has no plans to charge any of the students in the protest with any conduct violation. Were actual conduct charges to be brought, I do not think you would have the support of the majority of the faculty nor students, and I think the Senate would react in a manner which you would find unproductive. A couple senators have already threatened a resolution to be introduced next Wednesday; we have a busy agenda that day and I would prefer to stay on task.

As you know, I have invited [the UO student collective] to come to the Senate for a brief 5-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute question and answer period. [The UO student collective] has not responded yet. In conversation with faculty, more individuals agree that this is the correct course of action for the Senate than agree with you that this is rewarding bad behavior. I will not argue that we are not rewarding bad behavior, because I see your point, but I think more people are moved by the argument that these students have fewer avenues to air their grievances than you or I, and that this was a legitimate protest.

I have been reflecting on my formal invitation of this student group to the next Senate meeting. Had I a do-over, I would take the advice of Frances White and merely indicate to this group that the Senate is a public forum on campus and that any group of students should be able to get on the agenda (with instructions on how to do so). This would allow the students an avenue for a public conversation without officially sanctioning it. I am unwilling to rescind my invitation to the student group, but I will hold onto this lesson for future use.

Thanks for considering my recommendations and for helping find a productive way out of this tricky situation,

Chris Sinclair, Assoc. Prof. Math, Senate President University of Oregon

Meanwhile, on the same day as the protest, the administration updated its website on Time, Place and Manner restrictions on free speech. They are calling these guidelines and procedures, not policies, because they agreed last year not to implement them as a policy, after the Senate raised numerous objections.

Until 2014, the UO Faculty had responsibility for the Student Conduct code. The Board of Trustees took that away from us as part of their Delegation of Authority, helped out by the faculty board member Susan Gary (Law) who failed to notify the faculty about the power-grab.

The new student conduct code even allows the administration to modify the  procedures retroactively, and apply them to existing student discipline cases:

All revisions to Student Conduct Code procedures, including but not limited to jurisdictional revisions, shall apply retroactively to pending Student Conduct complaints, filed on or after September 11, 2014

10/12/2017 update: Student Conduct Judge Tobin Klinger finds protest violated conduct code

Just kidding. Tobin Klinger is UO’s chief PR flack, not a Student Conduct Judge. He is not responsible for enforcing the student conduct code, nor has anyone at UO conducted any sort of investigation as to whether or not the student conduct code was violated, or whether any such violation was significant enough to supersede the UO policies on freedom of speech and academic freedom.

So what in the world was Klinger doing, in his official capacity as UO spokesperson, telling an Oregonian reporter 5 minutes after the administration suspended President Schill’s speech, that

“.. the demonstration actually violated university policy…”

Speaking in my private capacity as a blogger, I think the administration can make a plausible case that it did violate the code (and the Freedom of Inquiry and Speech policy). If that case succeeds they can then discipline the students accordingly.

But that case is going to be harder to make given this official statement from Klinger, which the students can argue is prejudicial.

10/9/2017 update: Small, ineffective, and reflects poorly on the student body

The Oregon Daily Emerald editorial board rarely posts editorials. They have written a good one on Friday’s protest:

Presidents and provosts gather in their safe-space to talk free speech

Apparently the organizer of the event, Chicago Provost Daniel Diermeier, thought the administrators wouldn’t come or wouldn’t speak freely if they thought their comments would be public. Insider Higher Ed has the report here: … Just last week, students shouted down talks at Columbia University and the University of Michigan. Those doing…

MLK Jr’s life and words demonstrated the importance of free speech far beyond the power of that racist little pissant Jeff Sessions to add or subtract

Call me a cynic, but it’s as if Trump’s AG Jeff Sessions is trying his best to destroy support for free speech among college students. That can’t be his goal, can it? What evidence is there, other than his lifetime of efforts to deny people their voting rights? The NYT…