Students, faculty share feedback on university academic freedom statement

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Members of the “Syracuse Statement” working group held two open forums Tuesday with the campus community to collect feedback for its developing academic freedom statement.

The first forum was held virtually in the afternoon and the other in the evening at the Barner-McDuffie House, formerly known as 119 Euclid. The conversations were moderated by several members of the working group, which is comprised of Syracuse University administrators, faculty and students.

“Our group has been working this semester to engage with the community to gather as much input as we can so we can craft a statement that will serve as a set of guiding principles,” said Lauryn Gouldin, a working group member and professor in the College of Law.

Chancellor Kent Syverud has maintained that the university will prioritize campus safety over academic freedom since a November University Senate meeting. Following on-campus demonstrations related to the Israel-Hamas war in late November, Syverud announced the development of the academic freedom statement in December.

The forum is the latest effort to gather feedback for the statement, which Gouldin said will act as guidelines for the university’s balance between safety and free speech. Other efforts include a survey sent in a March 7 campus-wide email, a feedback session at the March 6 Graduate Student Organization meeting and an announcement of a March 26 town hall at the Student Association’s Monday meeting.

At Tuesday’s online forum, which had 80 attendees, moderators posed six questions. The questions — which also appear in the campus-wide survey — focused on the university’s commitment to free expression, diverse points of view, community values and limitations and responsibilities associated with free speech.

The evening forum followed the same format as the virtual meeting. Nathanael Linton, a working group member and law student representative in SU’s Board of Trustees, said future conversations will utilize a similar structure to ensure the working group can collect “as many student voices as possible.”

Throughout the in-person conversation, a few attendees said they wanted the university to increase transparency and communication surrounding its freedom of speech policies. They also discussed university neutrality and to what extent faculty members should moderate conversations in their respective classrooms.

“I do believe, in a classroom setting as a small community, the instructor is the authority figure and should be fostering freedom of expression while keeping in mind the university’s DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) approach,” one attendee said.

Attendees of the online forum spoke and used the Zoom chat to share suggestions, which included inviting community leaders to speak at SU, reviewing the #NotAgainSU movement to understand student free speech, teaching students how to navigate misinformation as well as fostering affinity groups and diverse spaces.

Rachael Goodwin, an assistant professor in the Whitman School of Management, shared that in her classrooms, she creates a space where students learn to give their own opinions and embrace others’ differing perspectives. She encourages others to do the same.

“It seems fairly intuitive, but I think just setting that expectation from the beginning of the semester has, I think, really helped us to be able to tackle difficult conversations with different perspectives,” Goodwin said.

Christopher Weiss, a counselor at SU’s TRIO Student Support Services, expressed that as a counselor, he’s seen firsthand the importance of empathy, urging the university and faculty to engage in difficult conversations with empathy.

“We’re dealing with a lot of trauma in the world, both outside of SU, but sometimes within SU,” Weiss said. “The only way to … affirm their stories is to give them places — safe spaces to talk and discuss what it is (they are) going through.”

Other attendees emphasized the importance of using community involvement as a tool to teach students how to engage in difficult conversations and understand real-world issues.

Multiple attendees expressed a desire for specific guidelines related to free speech — similar to the Student Handbook — for students and faculty to have, both so they understand their rights and to protect them from punishments.

Tania Robinson, an SU alumna who is currently pursuing a master of science in project management, said students would benefit from “a written policy that every student knows (so) that they know they feel secure.”

Toward the end of the open forum, attendees and moderators discussed the definition of free speech and its potential limitations in prioritizing safety, preventing misinformation and fostering inclusion on campus.

Adam Singerman, an associate professor of Native American linguistics, voiced his “frustration” with the lack of clear definitions of terms regarding campus expression.

“Unless we actually have a working definition collectively of what it means for someone to be made to feel unsafe through speech, then I don’t know if we’re going to make progress in terms of actually arriving at a consensus about what kind of speech is protected within the university and what kind of speech isn’t protected,” Singerman said.

Gouldin and Nina Brown, an associate professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and working group member, said that many of the working group’s conversations revolve around making those definitions more clear, but that goals of diversity and inclusion sometimes clash with a “robust free expression policy.”

“Public institutions are bound by the First Amendment in ways that private institutions are not. And that is the point of this working group — to establish what we as a university want, that policy, the ideals that we want to uphold here,” Brown said.

Linton said he hopes the university will continue to hold open conversations surrounding free speech even after the release of the “Syracuse Statement.” In addition to the forums and feedback sessions, suggestions can be emailed directly to the working group at [email protected].

“It’s important that the students feel empowered and encouraged to share their opinions, even if they know someone may disagree,” Linton said. “Students need to fundamentally understand (their rights).”