A newly-created Free Speech Working Group is tasked with reviewing Syracuse University’s free speech and civil discourse policies. It will suggest potential policy revisions by the end of the academic year. 

Despite the stated goal, several faculty members in the University Senate said in interviews with The Daily Orange that they question the true purpose of the working group.

Chancellor Kent Syverud announced the creation of the working group last month. The working group’s members include faculty, administrators, students and three members of SU’s Board of Trustees.

At USen’s September meeting, Syverud said he fears free speech is limited by a university or department with a “homogenous orthodoxy.” Crystal Bartolovich, a university senator and associate professor of English, said Syverud didn’t provide any concrete evidence to prove that these statements were true of SU.

“I was disappointed,” she said. “Not that the chancellor considers free speech to be important. I agree with that. What I disagree with is the vagueness and the particular framing he has been using that I think pre-decides certain issues in ways that are against free speech.”

Syverud’s remarks about ideological uniformity at SU echo statements issued by conservative think tanks about liberal bias in higher education, Bartolovich said. Rather than citing specific examples of free speech limitations at SU, Syverud has used vocabulary that skews in favor of right-wing opinions, she said.

Syverud formed a similar working group in 2015, of which Bartolovich was a member, that conducted a comprehensive review of SU’s free speech policies. The chancellor hasn’t offered an explanation of what has occurred in the past four years that would make another policy review necessary, she said.

Mark Rupert, a university senator and professor of political science, said he is concerned that faculty voices are being suppressed by the dominance of administrators and trustees in the working group. Three of the group’s 15 members are faculty members. Trustees and university administrators should not have the final authority on a topic that largely concerns faculty, he said.

Syverud announced the creation of the working group without contacting university senators about the issue, Rupert said. He would have preferred if Syverud instead advised the creation of an ad-hoc USen committee to look into free speech at SU, he said.

“That felt to me like a slap in the face,” Rupert said. “It seemed to me the message they were sending to us is ‘You just work here, and we’ll make the decisions, and you do what we say.’”

Bartolovich is unsure why the three trustees, who “have no particular expertise in free speech,” were chosen to be part of the working group, she said. David Edelstein’s career focused on information technology and finance. Reinaldo Pascual is a former lawyer specializing in financial investments. Richard Thompson, the former chair of the Board of Trustees, is a senior counsel in the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

Margaret Susan Thompson, a university senator and associate professor of history and political science, said she and other senators are frustrated by the lack of communication from Syverud in response to their questions. She and several other senators, including Rupert and Bartolovich, have sent letters and emails to Syverud, but he has yet to respond to any of them, she said.

“It feels like I’m dropping this into an ocean or vacuum,” Thompson said. “If he does welcome open dialogue, why doesn’t he respond to us?”

Syverud also hasn’t communicated what problems related to free speech at SU that he is hoping to investigate with the formation of the working group, Thompson said. If the working group will look into his comments about ideological uniformity among faculty, then the issue should be within the purview of USen, she said.

At the very least, university senators should know what specific free speech concerns Syverud is referring to and what evidence there is to prove their existence, she said.

“Before you set up a new working group and decide there’s a need for a new policy, you tell people what the problem is,” Thompson said. “How can we solve a problem if we don’t know what it is? How do we know if it is a problem if we don’t know what it is?”

The Free Speech Working Group held its first meeting last week. The working group is expected to report its interim recommendations in January and deliver its final report by May.

Published on November 10, 2019 at 8:58 pm

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu