Academic freedom is about the freedom to choose: the freedom to research this problem and not that one, to consider or advance one argument in the classroom and to criticize another. But freedom of choice only means something if the choices themselves are meaningful. Part of how universities make sure faculty members’ choices have meaning is through shared governance. And shared governance is under attack.
As part of the ongoing legislative attack on academic freedom and campus free speech, state-level proposals to alter university governance and remove faculty from decision-making have bubbled up across the country. Instead of following the well-established concept of governance shared by faculty, administrators, and governing boards, they are trying to shift power to themselves.
What is shared governance?
As defined more than 50 years ago by the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, and what is now the American Association of Colleges and Universities, it refers to the joint responsibility of faculty, administrators, and boards of trustees to govern institutions of higher education. Like the three branches of government, these three actors within the university do not always agree. But that is precisely the point. Each has its separate area of competence, and it is out of the debate and deliberation within and between these three branches that sound educational policy is made.
For instance, only the faculty have the authority to set curricular content, as they are the only ones with the subject matter expertise. Typically, they exercise this authority through a representative body, like a faculty senate, or through a curriculum committee of faculty appointed by elected faculty representatives. Faculty also have the authority to develop programs and set requirements for graduation, because only they can judge what students need to know. Administrators, however, are not silent on these matters. They set budgetary priorities, conduct employee and program reviews, and make decisions about long-range planning. And the administrators, in turn, are usually selected by the governing board, which, while operating at a remove from day-to-day university business, makes sure that the institution remains true to its educational mission.
If all of that sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Gray areas abound, and these zones of competence often intersect in complex ways. Academic hiring, for example, draws on the expertise of faculty (because only they can judge whether a candidate is qualified), but also of administrators (who must balance the needs of many different departments all clamoring for a new hire). Nor is any one branch’s authority within its respective area of competence absolute. For instance, no faculty senate may require applicants for tenure to affirm their support for a political position or ideology. True, under the principles of shared governance, faculty bodies set the standards for tenure, but they must always do so with an eye towards enhancing academic freedom, not diminishing it.
Despite these complications, the broad contours of shared governance are clear enough, and they have served American higher ed well for many decades. Together, they sustain an environment in which genuine academic freedom – the freedom to choose what course to teach, what book to assign, what paper to write, what problem to solve – is able to thrive and expand.
But today, more than ever before, there are those who would like to see shared governance disappear.
The Future Is Texas
The nexus of these efforts appears to be Texas. Last April, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced his intention in 2025 to investigate university governance, including “the role of ‘faculty senates’…in representing faculty interests to higher education institution administrations.” It’s too soon still to say what that investigation will yield, but it clearly indicates where the state’s attention this year will be.
That sentiment was echoed recently by State Sen. Brandon Creighton, one of the Texas legislature’s most influential lawmakers on higher education policy. Asked by a local journalist about his next project now that DEI offices have been banned in the state’s public universities, Creighton highlighted “governance for how universities work.” And all of this was thrown into much sharper relief by Texas Governor Greg Abbott during this month’s State of the State Address, in which he announced:
“Our public universities must also be more accountable. College professors have increasingly pushed woke agendas. They have too much influence over who is hired to educate our kids. We need legislation that prohibits professors from having any say over employment decisions.”
Proposals like these have been bubbling up in state legislatures around the country with increasing frequency. Last year, HB 2735 passed both chambers of the Arizona legislature before being vetoed by the state’s governor. According to the bill’s sponsor, state Representative Travis Grantham, the legislation was necessary to wrestle control of the University of Arizona back from its faculty, whom he accused of being “the most left of the left” and “grabbing and clinging to power.” Had Grantham’s bill become law, faculty would have been stripped of their ability to approve academic degrees or programs. That power instead would have fallen to the Board of Regents (the members of which are appointed by the state) or the university president. As for the faculty senate, it would still play a role, but purely as a consultative body.
But Texas legislators’ assaults on shared governance go further. One bill introduced this year, SB 452, would require academic departments to seek approval from their university’s governing board before appointing or hiring a unit Head or Chair. Another bill, SB 757 would require the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to immediately cease all student enrollment in, and eventually shutter, any academic program whose graduates fail to achieve specific earnings benchmarks, regardless of what administrators, faculty, or even the Coordinating Board itself believes to be wise. And SB 1069 says that if a member of the faculty is found guilty of “discriminat[ing] against a student on the basis of religion,” not only shall the faculty member be fired, but their department “shall be placed under the conservatorship of the office of the president” for a period of no less than 90 days. During this time, the president would have a free hand to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that “there are no continuing risks of religious discrimination” against students.
With this last bill, SB 1069, the potential for abuse is enormous. Readers may recall how Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order last year that requires public colleges and universities to incorporate the IHRA working definition of antisemitism into their campus speech and anti-discrimination policies. Or how the federal Department of Education has directed institutions to “consider” the IHRA definition when determining whether speech critical of Israel constitutes a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights. PEN America, along with other free speech groups, has voiced concerns about this kind of use of the IHRA definition, as its examples can lead institutions to equate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism, triggering severe penalties for political speech. When combined with these regulations, SB 1069 would form an especially powerful tool of censorship. Seemingly, whole academic units could be seized and disassembled by administrative fiat, all because of a single faculty member’s words.
One final Texas bill, SB 1489, merits special attention. Under current regulations set by the Texas Board of Regents, the faculty of each public college or university must play “a major role” in faculty governance, including over “general academic policies” and “approval of candidates for degrees.” The Regents’ policies also direct university presidents to submit all matters related to curriculum and instruction to the faculty senate for formal review. And of course many faculty senates have committees set aside to investigate complaints about tenure and promotion. SB 1489 would do away with all of that, requiring each faculty senate to secure permission from its institution’s governing board to even exist and relegating those that receive it to an advisory role only. These faculty senates would also be prohibited from having any final decision-making authority or taking any action on behalf of the institution, including “approving personnel action or conducting an investigation.” Instead, all of these powers would be transferred to the institution’s governing board.
In other words, what Texas lawmakers want is a general shift of university power upwards: from faculty to administrators, from administrators to the governing board, and (wherever possible) from the governing board to themselves.
Where the Rules Don’t Apply
Another way that shared governance can come under attack occurs when lawmakers create new academic institutes or schools, often bearing specific mandates around intellectual freedom or American civics. Examples include Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (the first and the model for all that follow), the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, and the University of Toledo’s Institute of Constitutional Thought and Leadership.
PEN America does not oppose the creation by legislators of such schools and institutes. Lawmakers establish new academic units all the time. Usually it is to address some pressing issue or job sector need, but there is nothing objectionable about a school focused on American civics – quite the opposite. Nor does PEN America accept the charge, frequently leveled against these institutions, that their mere creation represents a conservative takeover of higher education. So long as the principles of academic freedom are upheld, they deserve to be judged the same way any other school or institute is: by the quality of their teaching and research.
But academic freedom requires shared governance, and that is where these schools can come up short. Set up not quite as a full-fledged academic department, and not quite as a private sector think tank, these schools and institutes sometimes become spaces where too few of the normal rules of academic life apply. From a distance, they seem for all the world to be ordinary academic units. But on closer inspection, something much more concerning comes into view.
A good example is a proposal for the School of Intellectual Freedom, now under consideration by Iowa lawmakers for installation at the University of Iowa. It has all of the bells and whistles of any other university center or institute: it would hire promising faculty, establish programs and curricula, offer courses in a range of subjects, and bring in outside speakers. In other words, exactly the sort of stuff you’d expect from a School of Intellectual Freedom, but with one perverse twist: all of it, without exception, would be controlled by the dean.
Only the dean would be permitted to hire faculty, and would wield “sole and exclusive authority” over recruitment and terms of employment. Only the dean would be permitted to “oversee, develop, and approve the curriculum, courses, and programs of the school.” And only the dean would have the ability “to invite guest speakers to the university on behalf of the school.” As for who chooses the dean, that responsibility falls to a nine-person committee, of whom only one member may be an employee of the university. And nothing in the bill would require the dean to consult with the Faculty Senate or seek faculty approval before authorizing a course, both of which are standard operating procedures at the University of Iowa’s other schools and centers.
In other words, it would be a school of intellectual freedom in name only. In practice, it would be an academic fief ruled over by one person with the power to determine nearly every salient facet of the educational process. Faculty would be left on the outside looking in.
Few lawmakers are so brazen as to write the elimination of shared governance directly into law (though a bill proposed in Utah last year came close). More typically, the legislative strong-arming comes after the school or institute is created.
That’s what happened at the University of Florida after state lawmakers established the Hamilton Center in 2022, and for that reason it presents a cautionary tale of how these things can go wrong. Normally when an academic unit proposes a new major, faculty members in other departments weigh in to ensure that it does not duplicate existing majors. That’s not what happened at the University of Florida. A small number of faculty in the university’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences warned that the new majors would overlap with those already on offer. They also accused then-President Ben Sasse of trying to rush the approval process and violating procedural norms. Enraged at what he saw as their obstructionism, Sasse reportedly threatened to dissolve the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences altogether.
Panic then broke out across the university. One of the college’s associate deans, reportedly desperate to appease Sasse, ordered department heads to sign pledges of support for the Hamilton Center and its majors. The associate dean even supplied them with a template they could use to pledge their loyalty and cooperation. Those pledges now secured, the proposed majors were presented for consideration with less than a week’s notice during an emergency summer session of the Faculty Senate, an event without precedent at the University of Florida. Less than half of the faculty senators were in attendance and debate was squelched by the Senate Chair. According to one professor in attendance, the meeting was “a railroad job” from start to finish. “The people in power in Tallahassee want the Hamilton Center. All right, OK, but you don’t get to rush it through.” By all accounts, that’s where things stand today, with the Center up and running.
Episodes like this are not common. Many schools with similar mandates are free from this sort of scandal. But as more and more lawmakers flex their muscle over higher ed, it’s only a matter of time before they become more common.
Conclusion
These legislative attacks on shared governance may seem more complicated or less dangerous than the straightforward educational gag orders that ban classroom speech, or than the administrative bans on DEI offices which have spread in the past year. It can be hard for many people to understand why university faculty, who after all are employees of their institution, should have any role in its management. It can be difficult as well to see why public officials shouldn’t be in full control of public education.
But without shared governance and the balance it strikes, universities won’t educate at all. They will propagandize, taking their cues from administrators and politicians and their special interests, or pandering to the whims and biases of students, rather than from a system of checks and balances that is meant to prioritize open inquiry and the search for truth. For that reason alone, shared governance merits protection during this period of sustained assault on higher education, in tandem with academic freedom.
