Free Speech, Compelled Speech, and Academic Freedom

In the face of a continuing onslaught of politicized attacks on academic freedom, United Campus Workers stand resolute in our defense of public educators' right to free speech and personal safety.

The Board of Regents' proposed policy to create a digitally searchable public archive providing faculty's academic profiles and course details would needlessly expose Georgia's teachers and researchers to the risk of great harm. Georgia must not become a place where academics fear persecution by online extremists on the one hand, and on the other, the craven attempts of administrators to appease such extremists by disciplining faculty.

We do not improve the quality of public education in Georgia by punishing those who are tasked with preparing the next generation for success in their careers of choice. Rather, when we eliminate common-sense guardrails that protect academic freedom at our institutions of higher education, we degrade our students' ability to compete on the job market. Scared, intimidated teachers do not teach well. We can only hope that, in the rushed and confused roll-out of this policy, our administrators are not so neglectful of their duty of care as employers that they advertise where and when we teach alongside our course topics, the titles of our publications, and our full names.

Let there be no mistake—our syllabi and curricula vitae are not secret documents hitherto kept concealed from the people of Georgia. Our publications are public. Our course calendars circulate freely among students and other faculty, and along with our full syllabi they are of course at all times viewable by our supervisors and administrators. So what justifies the enormous additional logistical overhead necessary to make all this information publicly searchable, e.g. by AI bot farms and anti-intellectual extremists? Exposing our education workers to risk is the point. We remind those in power who would hush researchers and teachers in the hope that silence will protect them that, as history teaches, it never does.

Julie Carmine LaCorte (she/her)
Associate Professor, Georgia State University
Georgia Steering Committee Chair, United Campus Workers Southeast