Confidentiality and Faculty Representation in Academic Governance

This report argues that requiring faculty members to sign confidentiality agreements as a requirement to serve on university committees is in most cases inconsistent with widely accepted standards of shared governance and with the concept of serving as a representative. This argument does not apply to faculty serving on promotion and tenure committees and similar bodies, where faculty do not serve as representatives, but instead are elected to exercise their own professional judgment in interpreting and applying faculty-established criteria relevant to these areas. The argument has limited applicability to search committees for administrators.