4 thoughts on "Faculty Senate – November 13, 2024"

1. Regarding the Expressive Activities policy, I think one thing we need to accept is that from the perspective of *protest*, it will never be acceptable, because a huge point of many protests is to cause disruption, which Cornell is obligated (both legally and arguably ethically) to prevent. So the policy will fundamentally be limited to providing as free of speech as possible without infringing on the rights of others.

   As the classic line goes: your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

   And I think the current policy is doing a great job of moving in that direction as much as possible, and giving every possible inch of ‘acceptable activity’ to whomever chooses to make use of it, while only limiting activity where the reasonable rights of others begin and must be respected. But, from the view of causing disruption in order to achieve goals, there will (probably) always be community members who will step past whatever boundaries are made, and thus the systems to deal with such people are incredibly important.

   I do have one question however: one of the guiding principles of the original draft policy was to consolidate various policy items from the various campus codes into one place. But it appears that the idea is now to back off on that, and e.g. return candle sizes to the fire code, rather than being placed in the EAC. Was this an intentional change in design, or will the Speech website, for example, contain various snippets of code which are likely to be pertinent, and it’s only the EAC specifically that will be limited to considerations not written elsewhere?

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2. Many of the comments during the faculty senate meeting related to the proposed sense of the senate resolution regarding use of academic listservs ignored an important aspect. In a hierarchical situation with a significant power imbalance built in, such as between students and faculty, political messages sent through “official channels” come with implied consequences. If a course professor sends a message to their students encouraging them to attend a specific political protest, students might conclude that being seen there will improve their course grade, or not being seen there might negatively impact their course grade.

   There still exist controversial topics on which reasonable people may disagree, and using university resources to take a side on such issues is completely inappropriate, especially in the presence of an academic hierarchy. Reminding people to avoid such uses of official communication channels is not an infringement on academic freedom. The resolution specifically refers to communications that, “… are not related to the work of the department or the course.”

   I’m strongly in favor of the resolution.

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3. Regarding the Sense of the Senate resolution for academic listservs: I wish that it had been formulated MORE NARROWLY. For example, whatever YG’s intent was, as formulated it does apply to communications among faculty using departmental listservs.
   It would have been better to have a resolution calling on instructors not to use course listservs or Canvas course-sites to encourage, or discourage, students in their classes to engage in, or from engaging in, specified political activities. I think that such a resolution would address the problems to which YG referred when presenting the reasons for the original resolution.
   I will not support this resolution as it stands.

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4. Re: the use of Academic List-servers, I would just add:

   It is one thing to say that students should expect their worldview to be challenged, and that they may find themselves distressed, as a result of what they are learning in class. This is how learning often works, especially in the humanities and social sciences, where society has so many ways of covering up what others consider to be a fundamental truth.

   It’s another thing entirely to say that a student (or a fellow member of the department) should have to wade through someone’s personal political beliefs just to access their homework assignments. While he did not do so last session, Dr. Grossman in particular has multiple times provided us of specific examples of things faculty have said or written which caused distress for Jewish students (who are almost certainly not alone in being distressed by some faculty speech, but have shown a specific willingness to come to Dr. Grossman with their good-faith concerns), and these items have in many cases not been obviously needed to convey course material or concepts.

   Whether the resolution passes or fails, I do not think it is unreasonable for we members of the faculty to consider what we write in our official communications, and consider whether something which is likely to cause distress to our students or colleagues actually needs to be said, and if that barrier needs to exist between them and their studies or duties.

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