The dangers of ad-hoc investigations
February 7th, 2008 by ShermanLast spring, the UFF-USF chapter leadership discussed Youtube with the administration, concerned about the possibility of surreptitious recordings of classes, and both sides agreed that faculty could place reasonable restrictions on class recordings in a syllabus.
The concern from a union perspective was with the possibility of an anonymous video prompting an inappropriate investigation from the public nature of Youtube. The dangers of ad-hoc investigations of teaching have become clear in the last few years, most recently at Brandeis, where the faculty senate and the provost are at odds over the provost’s investigation of a faculty member’s conduct, including placing a member of the administration in the class to monitor the faculty’s conduct. This case has attracted the attention of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the ACLU of Massachusetts, among others.
The case, very briefly: Donald Hindley was accused by a small number of students of using the term “wetback” in class in a derogatory fashion. Hindley claimed he was explaining the social context of the term, the provost assigned a monitor for the class without a hearing, and singled him out by requiring him to attend what the provost described as “anti-discrimination training.”*
The Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU explained the substantive and procedural issues clearly:
The ACLU of Massachusetts supports the right of all students to equal educational opportunity. Severe, pervasive, or targeted harassment of a student based on race, national origin, or ethnicity can interfere with the ability of students to obtain an education and would violate our state and federal civil rights laws. However, incidental comments by a professor in class, even if offensive to some, do not constitute illegal harassment under the law, and imposing punishment on a faculty member for occasional comments significantly jeopardizes freedom of thought and academic freedom which are so integral to a university and the quality of education that students will receive there.
Students plainly have the right to complain about a professor, to raise their complaints with a professor, organize with other students to discuss with the professor their objections, and debate what has gone on. However, faculty members also have the right to a fair process when they have been accused of wrongdoing, and Brandeis appears to have denied that process to Professor Hindley.
We are also troubled by this incident because it comes after several other recent incidents at Brandeis in which the University administration’s initial impulse has been to shut down unpopular expression rather than affirm the principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom which are integral to a university community.
While the situation at Brandeis is different from the concerns about Youtube the UFF-USF chapter raised in consultation, the dangers of ad-hoc investigations are clear in this case and parallel: Brandeis’s provost made ad-hoc decisions that skirted serious concerns about procedural and substantive due process. The rush to judgment at Brandeis has been roundly criticized by the university’s faculty senate and civil-rights organizations.
* – Several years ago, the UFF-USF chapter filed a grievance when the administration wanted to require diversity training of all faculty without bargaining the change in assignments. Then-chapter president Mitch Silverman explained to the faculty senate that he attended one of the diversity seminars, he thought it was well done and recommended it to everyone, but that the university could not require it. The grievance was settled when the administration withdrew the requirement.
