The University Senate discussing CAFR’s report over academic freedom concerns at the Chase Center during Thursday’s meeting in Sullivant Hall. Credit: Josephine Pajemola | Lantern Reporter
Concerns regarding the academic freedom of faculty within the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Ohio State were brought to debate at Thursday’s University Senate meeting in Sullivant Hall, following the Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility presenting a report outlining their findings on the matter.
The Chase Center is an academic unit that primarily researches and teaches the American constitutional order to promote intellectual diversity, according to the center’s website. The center was formed in compliance with a 2023 state law that established similar independent centers at five Ohio universities, including Ohio State.
The Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility’s mission is to ensure Ohio State’s faculty may operate without undue restriction, according to the University Senate website.
Tristam McPherson, a member of the committee and a professor in the Department of Philosophy, presented the committee’s report at the University Senate meeting on Thursday.
“The core issue, as we see it, is the seemingly extraordinary powers of the director of the center that are set out by the legislation that creates the center,” McPherson said. “One example: The director shall oversee, develop and approve the center’s curriculum. Now, we’re not legal experts, but on its face, this wording in the legislation appears to grant the power to unilaterally determine what is and is not taught at the center, and we take this power to conflict with the core faculty academic freedom to propose and teach courses on the basis of one’s expertise.”
Michael Clune, a professor at the Chase Center, spoke during the meeting with a response from the center’s faculty.?
Clune’s presentation made note that the committee’s findings and report do not intend to describe the character of the current director of the Chase Center.
“As faculty members of the center, we write to affirm that not only have we not experienced any diminution of our academic freedom, but the committee’s description of the conditions they believe threaten our freedom is wrong in every respect,” Clune said.
The report’s second finding was that the center’s ideological nature also impedes its academic freedom.
The committee’s report also states that 2023 state law “was motivated by a diagnosis, popular in some circles in American politics, that universities are in the grip of “leftist” ideologies, causing students to become hostile to Republican ideas.”
The committee concluded that these findings deprive the center’s faculty of proper academic freedom and threaten the academic freedom of the university as a whole, and recommended that a temporary committee be created in the University Senate to clarify the University’s policies on academic freedom of the faculty of the Chase Center, to clarify the policies of the Chase Center and to make recommendations to the University Senate regarding the policies.
Clune said that the report misrepresents and exaggerates the director of the Chase Center’s power, and that the report is ignorant of the national debate over intellectual diversity and freedom.
“The perception of the ideological skewing of American universities is widespread, bipartisan, and founded on robust evidence,” Clune said. “While the report’s worries about the center are groundless, there are legitimate concerns about our campus’s climate that we look forward to partnering with the committee to address.”
Clune also said that the committee never spoke to the faculty of the Chase Center about their experiences of academic freedom while at Ohio State.
“The report invents and misrepresents basic facts and fails to take minimal steps, such as actually speaking with faculty, to support its extreme allegations,” Clune said.
Kaleb Duarte, a fourth-year in architecture, raised concerns at the meeting that the proposed ad hoc committee by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility will have little substantial impact regardless of their findings.
“Clarifying university policy is not the same as addressing the structural conditions that threaten academic freedom, especially when they do not supersede the administrative code,” Duarte said. “From my perspective, it generally lacks a clear theory of change, and I struggle to see what any substantial new knowledge that a report from an ad hoc committee can produce.”
Caroline Clark, a faculty senator and a professor in the College of Education and Human Ecology, proposed a motion to the University Steering Committee to refer the report to the University Steering Committee so that the committee could review and research the findings separately.
The Steering Committee sets the agenda for all other University committees and directs proposals to the relevant senate committee, according to the University Senate website.
“It does have undergraduate representation, graduate student representation, staff representation, and I think it’s the appropriate venue to have a more robust, extended conversation followed by some considered recommendations for how to address the concerns raised by the committee,” Clark said.
The motion was voted on and passed at Thursday’s University Senate meeting, with an added amendment that the Steering Committee have representation from the Chase Center during discussions on the matter.
