We are unable to fully display the content of this page.
This is most likely due to a content blocker on your computer or network.
Please allow access to our site and then refresh this page. You may then be asked to log in, create an account (if you don't already have one), or subscribe.
If you continue to experience issues, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Across the country, some 2,800 protesters have been arrested, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. Last week I watched as officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the California Highway Patrol overwhelmed the encampment at my own campus, the University of California at Los Angeles, with a barrage of flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets into the wee hours of night. A day earlier, the police had stood by as counterprotesters attacked the demonstrators.
The American Association of University Professors has denounced the militarized response to student dissent: “At this critical moment,” the organization writes, “too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests. These administrators are failing in their duty to their institutions, their faculty, their students, and their central obligation to our democratic society.” In an interview for The Review, I spoke with Irene Mulvey, president of the AAUP. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve named a “crisis of repression” plaguing U.S. higher education. What is that crisis, and where did it come from?
We’ve seen heavily militarized police called in almost immediately to break up what began as largely peaceful protests in outdoor areas. These are on college campuses where our goal is debate, free and open inquiry. What we’ve seen is immediate silencing of speech, without any genuine attempt to talk to the students and understand the concerns that led to the protests, to think about and hear their demands. I’ve spent my entire career on college campuses, and this silencing of speech feels like a crisis of repression.
Why now? Is there something particular about the content of the protests? Or do you think that it’s more about changing university conditions generally, or about changing politics off campus?
These protests, like most protest movements before them, criticize policies of the U.S. government. In a democracy, criticizing government policies is a constitutionally protected right. It follows from principles of academic freedom that that right extends to campuses, whether public or private. As with protests in the past, there are people with power and influence who would silence this criticism if they could. It’s that pressure that university presidents are responding to when they’re inviting what is, in my view, a disproportionate police response. They are responding to external pressure from people who would shut down this speech if they could. We’re not talking about free speech in the abstract — we’re talking about free speech on college campuses, where our goal should be education.
I’ve spent my entire career on college campuses, and this silencing of speech feels like a crisis of repression.
How do you draw the line between protecting the right to free speech and protest while maintaining student safety? That’s really important. There has been genuine antisemitism at some protests, and it’s horrific and completely unacceptable. Colleges and universities have policies in place to deal with that, and they should deal with that. But the way to balance safety and protest, on a college campus, is through education. We need to model, teach, and promote civil discourse, respectful dialogue. To be training students in civic engagement and respectful discourse even when we disagree, to understand other people’s points of view, to understand why your words might hurt someone else. The goal on a college campus should be education and understanding each other even when we disagree. If you’re suppressing speech in the name of safety, you’re doing the wrong thing.
You’ve said that repressive policing of speech and of academic freedom poses an “existential threat to democracy.” What relationship do you see between academic freedom on campus and democracy more generally?
Higher education in a democracy serves the public good, in the sense that we produce knowledge through free and open inquiry. Nobody gets to tell us what we’re allowed to study and what we’re not allowed to study. We produce knowledge, we teach, we train the next generation. Higher ed is also there to call out government corruption, to call out corporate corruption, to be there to assist people drafting public policy with all our expertise. So when outsiders — like politicians, trustees, donors, alumni — try to shape higher education to their own agenda instead of simply serving the public good, that’s a danger, because they undermine the independence and institutional autonomy that colleges and universities need to play their essential role as pillars of democracy. The militarized law-enforcement response is of a piece with that threat. It silences speech because someone powerful doesn’t like it.
How closely related is this erosion of the ability of universities to govern themselves to a more general erosion of faculty power on campus?
What keeps higher education strong as a pillar of democracy is the shared governance that we at the AAUP are promoting since we were founded in 1915. That means that the faculty, because of their expertise, make the decisions on curriculum, research, hiring, tenure, promotion, and anything involving the educational mission. The administrators have their roles over which they have primary responsibility. The trustees have their roles. But the faculty have a primary responsibility for educational matters. That’s an essential role for the faculty to play, and that’s what keeps the university strong and independent. And that role has been undermined because faculty have lost academic freedom. Anti-tenure laws, the explosion of contingent faculty who have no protection for academic freedom — it’s already been undermined to a large extent. But it’s the faculty’s role that enables the university to play its role in our democracy. So if the faculty lose their power, then the whole thing is going to fall down like a house of cards.
Another three university leaders are being called by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to testify to Congress later this month about campus antisemitism. You’ve written that administrators should “not tolerate” these hearings: What does that mean to you?
That’s a tough one. It would be nice to see somebody call out these hearings for the performative political theater that they are. It’s ridiculous to call them hearings because nobody’s listening. None of the Republicans are listening. They’re just using this as an opportunity to get sound bites and viral clips. It would be nice to see someone call that out for what it is.
The three presidents that have testified thus far have been presidents of private universities. This is unprecedented, for the federal government to feel that they have a right to dictate what’s happening on private university campuses. The job of any college president testifying before Congress in this moment, in my view, is to give a full-throated and robust defense of academic freedom and free-speech rights for students, and freedom-of-assembly rights for students, and free press for student journalists. That’s what they should be doing in front of this committee. If it costs them their job, so be it. If the cost of keeping your job is doing what the president of Columbia did, then it’s not worth it.
It’s the faculty’s role that enables the university to play its role in our democracy. So if the faculty lose their power, then the whole thing is going to fall down like a house of cards.
Do you feel like you’ve seen administrators or faculty on any particular campus navigating this moment especially well?
What they did at Wesleyan, where President Michael Roth sent out an email explaining that the encampment did technically violate rules but he was going to let it stay as long as they were peaceful and didn’t disturb — that was remarkable. Some other schools have reached agreements with the student protesters: Northwestern, Evergreen State College, Brown, and Rutgers. That’s the way to move forward. These kids pay tuition to attend these schools. They live on campus. So in a sense it’s like they’re on their own front lawn, with their tents and their signs.
I think the way to move forward on a college campus, where the goal is education, is to take the student protesters seriously, listen to their concerns, understand their demands, and sit down and talk with them. Which, by the way, is a remarkable educational opportunity for the students to learn how to negotiate, to learn how to listen to what the other side has to say, to learn how to compromise, to learn how to reach an agreement, to learn that not all your demands are going to be met.
What is this moment like for AAUP? What have you been doing in support of your chapters on campuses across the nation?
We have an email account where any faculty members who’ve been sanctioned or disciplined for their speech can email us with details, and we help. The silver lining here is we’re organizing faculty like never before. In the past, faculty haven’t been too keen on organizing. That’s changing. We’re seeing organizing around faculty who see how serious the threats to academic freedom are and realize that the only way to fight back is collectively, in solidarity.