Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, January 9. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

The faculty’s academic-freedom fears

A new survey of 8,458 professors offers one of the most comprehensive looks available at how faculty members view today’s glut of academic-freedom concerns. Many are deeply worried, as our Christa Dutton reports.

More than a third of faculty members said they have less academic freedom today than they did several years ago, found the survey, from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

• Thirty-five percent reported less freedom teaching, 36 percent cited less freedom speaking as citizens, and 38 percent pointed to less freedom taking part in institutional governance.

Long-tenured faculty members felt the erosion more acutely. Among those who joined the faculty in 2017 or before, 44 percent said they’ve lost academic freedom in teaching, compared to just 27 percent of those who joined more recently.

Faculty members are avoiding hard topics — or feel forced to do so. Among specific areas of concern:

• Avoiding controversy: Just over half of faculty changed language in something they’d written in order to head off headaches.
• Fear of speaking up: More than half of respondents, 53 percent, worried about expressing statements they believe to be correct as scholars. Just under a third, 29 percent, were at least occasionally concerned about being harassed online.
• Chilly campus culture: A majority of faculty members, 61 percent, said their colleagues have a tendency to avoid controversial topics at informal events and social gatherings.
• Curricular changes: Half of respondents said their colleagues have become more cautious during curricular revisions.
• Divisive concepts: Some 46 percent said the communities around their colleges had grown more concerned about topics including race, American history, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Among the faculty identifying that trend, 62 percent said their institution’s climate of academic freedom had been harmed.
• Constraints: Some 36 percent of respondents reported feeling restricted about what they can say in faculty and department meetings. A third said the same relating to their social-media speech, and 24 percent reported restrictions on what they teach in courses.
• Political conformity: A quarter said they’d felt pressure to conform to administrators’ political views or the views of the faculty as a whole.
• Trouble trusting in students: A third worry their students might record lectures or class discussions without consent. Almost half, 47 percent, are concerned students might share their statements out of context, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Yet professors still value key components of free and civil discourse, which include:

• Multiple perspectives: Almost all respondents, 93 percent, think faculty members should invite student perspectives from all sides of issues.
• Respectful disagreement: About six in 10 frequently encourage “mutually respectful disagreement” among students in their courses.

Other findings are harder to parse, as is often the case with speech and academic freedom. Among them:

• Hard classroom conversations: Only 12 percent of faculty members said classroom discussions should be stopped if views arise that some students find harmful. But almost a quarter said a student who says something perceived as harmful should be stopped from speaking. A fifth said that student should be reported to an administrator.
• Administrative support: Some 69 percent of faculty members said their college administration supports academic freedom at least somewhat. Yet fewer than half as many think most administrators would be supportive in the face of controversy.
• Personal views: Two-thirds of faculty members think they should be able to express their personal views in the course of their teaching.

These issues are deeply affecting a subset of professors. About one in 10 said they had considered looking for a job at a different college because of their home state’s climate. That jumps to 16 percent among those in states that passed divisive-concepts laws.

And it’s worth wondering if conditions have eroded since the survey was in the field. Responses were collected from faculty members between December 2023 and February 2024, before colleges cracked down last spring on pro-Palestinian protests.

“The findings should serve as a wake-up call for campus leaders, policymakers, and anyone who understands the vital role higher education plays in improving the lives of individuals and communities,” AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella said in a statement.

The context: Faculty aren’t alone. Students feel their free-speech rights have grown less secure, too, found a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study last year.

📱 Read the full story: Many College Professors Say Their Academic Freedom Is In Decline, Study Finds

Quick hits

• Ed secretary pick hits paperwork holdup: Linda McMahon, President-elect Trump’s pick for education secretary, could have her confirmation delayed because the Senate committee charged with evaluating her was awaiting paperwork. Cabinet nominees must submit documents like conflict-of-interest and financial disclosures. (Politico)
• CAIR website calls out “hostile campuses”: The Council on American-Islamic Relations launched a website listing institutions that it has flagged for “reported incidents, policies, and discriminatory practices targeting Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other individuals opposing occupation, apartheid, and genocide.” (CAIR)
• Pledge allegedly set on fire: Four San Diego State University students have pleaded not guilty to felony charges after prosecutors said a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity pledge was set on fire during a skit at a party last year, resulting in third-degree burns that left him in the hospital for weeks. Prosecutors said three of those charged lied to investigators, deleted evidence on social media, and told other frat members to cover up the incident. The pledge set on fire was among those charged. (Associated Press)
• University cleared for firing coach who refused vaccine: Washington State University was justified when it fired Nick Rolovich in 2021 because the head football coach refused to comply with state Covid-19 vaccine requirements, a federal judge ruled. Rolovich sued, arguing his Catholic faith exempted him from the vaccine mandate, but District Judge Thomas Rice wrote that documents uncovered in the case showed the coach to be worried about secular concerns. The judge also found that the university couldn’t accommodate the coach’s exemption request without “undue hardship” like higher travel costs and curtailed recruitment. (Associated Press)
• Fires close L.A. campuses: Several colleges shut down their campuses and canceled classes on Wednesday as strong winds fueled out-of-control wildfires in the Los Angeles area. They included Santa Monica College’s Malibu campus, the California Institute of Technology, and Pepperdine University. The University of California at Los Angeles was open Wednesday but canceled undergraduate classes for Thursday and Friday, while moving graduate classes to remote instruction. (Los Angeles Times, Fox Business, UCLA)
• British Universities cut their presence on X: Several institutions have limited their use of the social-media site or quit it entirely, citing concerns that it spreads misinformation, promotes violence, and shows declining engagement, found a Reuters survey of 150 university, college, and conservatory accounts. Many of the country’s universities still post regularly to X, however. (Reuters)

Quote of the day

“Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective?”

— J. Bradley Creed, president of Campbell University

Private colleges are preparing to navigate many conflicts with elected officials, trustees, faculty members, students, alumni, and the general public, our Eric Kelderman reports from the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute in San Antonio this week.

• Creed said in a small-group discussion that he’s willing to change the way he discusses diversity, equity, and inclusion with state lawmakers, for example.

College presidents often feel their sector is misunderstood, and that they face demands that are impossible to meet. Cracking down on protests while protecting free speech is, at the very least, a tough needle to thread.

The Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C., could pursue substantial changes that would affect even private campuses: immigration restrictions, bans on transgender college athletes, an expanded endowment tax, and attempts to stamp out DEI.

📱 Read the full story: Private-College Presidents Brace For a Year of ‘Conflict’

Comings and goings

• Richard Locke, dean of Apple University, an educational unit within Apple Inc., and a former provost at Brown University, has been named dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Holly Gruhlke, a professor of business at Dickinson State University, has been named vice president for academic affairs and provost.
• Brian Pappas, dean of the University of North Dakota School of Law, has been named chancellor of the Indiana University South Bend.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

The humble advice column deserves more recognition. Professionally oriented versions like The Chronicle’s Ask The Chair are enlightening even for those who don’t work in their fields of focus. And who among us can look away from columns that grapple with the more sordid topics of dating and relationships?

Then there is Judith Martin, better known as the etiquette columnist Miss Manners. Unfailingly courteous, she examines what it means to be polite in an impolite world, often sprinkling her advice with self-deprecating humor or an elegant barb.

Unfortunately for higher ed, a university president recently received one such elegant barb. A writer reported being invited to a president’s box at a football game. The president, whom the writer didn’t name, was said to offer grammatical corrections and a “condescending stare” upon learning the writer’s alma mater. The writer responded by offering thanks for the visit and walking away.

“Miss Manners would have handled the situation exactly as you did,” Miss Manners responded. “And probably advised her young relatives to apply elsewhere.”