Garcetti v. Ceballos

Protect the Faculty Voice

In the face of unprecedented threats to academic freedom at public colleges and universities, the AAUP launched an awareness and action campaign called "Speak Up, Speak Out: Protect the Faculty Voice on Campus."

The AAUP Action Plan for Protecting an Independent Faculty Voice

It is essential that faculty members have the freedom to speak on topics important to both the academic community and the public as a whole. At public colleges and universities across the country, however, faculty are facing a very real and serious threat to their academic freedom and speech rights. 

How-to and Success Stories and Policies

The pieces below were written by faculty who have spearheaded successful efforts to amend policies on their campuses in order to protect the right of faculty to participate in shared governance.  We have also compiled a summary of policies passed at public institutions and organizations in response to post-Garcetti threats to academic freedom and shared governance; we hope the chart below is useful in your efforts to implement similar language.  See also the end of the subcommittee’s report  (.pdf) or executive summary for suggested policy language.

The University of Minnesota Revises its Academic Freedom Policy

University of Minnesota

Defending Academic Freedom in the Age of Garcetti

As the 2006 Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos continues to reverberate in academe, the best way for faculty members to defend their academic freedom is not through the courts but through clear university policies.

Academic Freedom In Contentious Practice

Knowledge In The Making: Academic Freedom And Free Speech in America's Schools And Universities. Joan DelFattore. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

 

Amicus Brief Supports Faculty Speech Rights

The AAUP recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of Loretta Capeheart, a tenured professor of justice studies at Northeastern Illinois University. The case is the latest in a series of cases in which lower courts have relied on the US Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which stated that a public employee can be disciplined for speech made as part of the employee’s official duties.

The Changing Media and Academic Freedom

The media have been both enemies and allies of faculty in the fight for academic freedom during the past century.

Garcetti and Salaita: Revisiting Academic Freedom

This article revisits the legal concept of academic freedom in the wake of Professor Steven Salaita’s dehiring and the 2006 US Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. It examines four key post-Garcetti decisions, each of which illustrates a potential solution to courts facing issues of academic freedom, and each of which has different implications for Professor Salaita’s dehiring. The article also proposes a new legal concept of academic freedom that would empower rather than restrict professors.

Negotiating Academic Freedom: A Cautionary Tale

In recent years, there has been a growing concern among academics that traditional protections of academic freedom have been eroded by increasingly intrusive and somewhat ill-informed court decisions. The most recent and prime example of this is the Garcetti v. Ceballos decision by the US Supreme Court and, more alarmingly, its progeny in other courts. Those decisions, and their implications, are the subject of a recently released AAUP special report, Protecting an Independent Faculty Voice: Academic Freedom after Garcetti v. Ceballos. In brief, the Garcetti decision said that in the course of carrying out one’s public employment responsibilities, an employee did not have First Amendment protections of free speech outside the classroom.

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