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The American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, has responded to a proliferation of administrative actions it deems as hastily enacted policies restricting rights to assemble and protest on college and university campuses.
The association, which recently revised its own policy concerning academic boycotts, released a statement that argues new on-campus policies responding to last spring’s antiwar demonstrations go beyond reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The statement asserts that those policies “impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression.”
AAUP said the new policies often require registration for demonstrations or protests, which, because they take place spontaneously or with little planning time, is tantamount to forbidding them.
“Requiring registration also enables surveillance of protest plans, which can discourage protests by groups with minority viewpoints,” the statement read. “Many of the latest expressive activity policies strictly limit the locations where demonstrations may take place, whether amplified sound can be used, and types of postings permitted. With harsh sanctions for violations, the policies broadly chill students and faculty from engaging in protests and demonstrations.”
The association listed a handful of concerns regarding the restrictive policies:
First, the policies severely undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education. Free inquiry and free expression are indispensable for the transmission of knowledge, the development of students, and the well-being of democracy.
Second, the policies trample on the rights of students — including the freedom of speech, to peaceful assembly, and the right of petition — as described in Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students.
Third, many such policies are being imposed with little to no faculty input.
Fourth, the policies curtail the rights of faculty, who are entitled to freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens.
“We must reiterate, as we said in our November 2023 statement Polarizing Times Demand Robust Academic Freedom, ‘By acceding to external political pressures and demands for political censorship instead of encouraging the utmost freedom of discussion, college and university administrations abandon their own responsibility for protecting the academic community’s central mission of education, research, and service to the broader society and to the public good.’”