Longer Term Prevention and Preparation

Although all faculty are potential targets, those teaching about and researching sensitive or politicized topics are especially vulnerable. At UMass, a disproportionate number of faculty in this position are nonwhite, women, LGBT+, and graduate instructors and assistant professors. Chairs can be proactive in helping faculty anticipate risks and distributing responsibility for teaching such classes across the department. 

While the faculty member should be reassured that the situation will not adversely affect how they are evaluated for personnel actions, the incident itself may impact the faculty member’s productivity. These situations are not only emotionally draining and demoralizing, but they often require extensive amounts of the faculty member’s time, especially if they get embroiled in related litigation. 

• Check in with the faculty member long-term and be prepared to consider a tenure delay action if necessary.  
• The attack may also affect the faculty member’s professional reputation and this is important to strategize around when soliciting external reviewers for tenure and promotion. 

Communicate to your faculty their obligations regarding public record requests and IT discovery processes so that they can make educated decisions about their email use and retention.

• See Appendix 2 on the Academic Freedom Crisis Toolkit main page.
• UMass IT strongly recommends that faculty use only UMass Exchange/Office365 or UMass Gmail for work- related emails and that they keep personal emails separate from business emails. The use of a personal email account for university business or the forwarding of one’s university email to a personal account “introduces risk and personal liability for faculty and staff, and may be a violation of federal law and campus policy” (UMass Information Security). 

Tell faculty: 

• When you publish something likely to be controversial, make a Google Alert for your name.
• Proactively block monitoring outlets such as College Fix and Campus Reform from your social media feed.
• State clearly on your social media profiles that views expressed there are your own, not those of your employer,
  as per AAUP recommendations: 
  • The AAUP asserts that “professors should also have the freedom to address the larger community without regard to any matter of social, political economic, or other interest without institutional discipline or restraint, save in response to fundamental violations of professional ethics or statements that suggest disciplinary incompetence.” 
  • “When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.” 
  • The AAUP also notes that statements of disassociation from the university, while possible on social media and blog profiles, is not always possible within the comments themselves (for example twitter posts). In its 2014 Electronic Communication update, the AAUP states: “the nature of electronic communication itself tends to decontextualize meaning and attribution, and faculty members cannot be held responsible for always indicating that they are speaking as individuals and not in the name of their institution, especially if doing so will place an undue burden on the faculty member’s ability to express views in electronic media.” 

• See MSP’s suggestions in Appendix 3 on the Academic Freedom Crisis Toolkit main page.

• Update code of conduct policies for students and employees to include copyright protections against digital dissemination of classroom materials. 
• The 2009 University Procedures for Dealing with Charges of Misconduct in Research a Board of Trustee procedure initiated in compliance with federal funding agencies, can be potentially weaponized by harassers. It is recommended that, in consultation with legal counsel and according to BoT T13-093 policy, procedures be edited to more clearly define when a preliminary investigation should be initiated and content added to deter accusations made in bad faith.
• Chairs, Associate Deans, and Deans should be made aware of these issues and be briefed on these best practices annually.
• Collective organizing through the MSP faculty union helps protect faculty academic freedom.
• Faculty Orientation should incorporate preventative strategies to help faculty be prepared if they choose to pursue public engagement in their work.