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APA Committee for Defense of
Professional Rights of Philosophers

2001 Report

May, 2002 (Volume 75, Issue 5)

Reports of APA Committees

Committee for the Defense of the Professional Rights of Philosophers

Michael Corrado, Chair

The Committee spent most of its time on cases carried over from last year. There was, however, one significant new case.

1. The Committee completed the investigation of a case in which a religiously affiliated university failed to renew the contract of an untenured faculty member who had spoken out publicly on sensitive issues, and had taken positions inconsistent with those of the hierarchy of the church the school is affiliated with. He had been reprimanded for those lapses, but it was unclear whether the failure to renew was related to those incidents. The faculty member, who was happily situated in a new job, was not seeking reinstatement, but rather asked that the university be censured for a violation of academic freedom.

The Committee agreed that there was not enough evidence of bad faith in the termination of this faculty member to justify asking the Board to censure the university on that ground. We were concerned, however, about the reprimands the faculty member had received. The reprimands were based upon a provision in the faculty handbook that required faculty, when speaking as citizens, to "make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the university." In the aftermath of the termination in question that provision was changed to oblige the faculty, in such circumstances, to indicate they are not speaking for the university "when the subject is controversial." Reprimands based upon these provisions and aimed selectively at faculty whose views differed from those of the university would clearly have a chilling effect on public speech by untenured faculty members. In this respect the change in wording only made the threatened possibility that much clearer. And although schools with religious affiliations may have the right to employ only those with conforming views (the matter is controversial; the AAUP, for example, seems not to have decided this issue), such a policy must be clearly announced in advance of hiring. Faculty already hired without notice of such a constraint on free speech cannot be rebuked for expressing nonconforming views.

In the case at hand there was no prior notice of such a policy, and yet it seems possible that the handbook provision was used selectively against nonconforming faculty members. It seems unlikely that faculty members who publicly expressed views conforming to those of the university would be reprimanded for not indicating they were not speaking for the university. There was, however, no direct evidence of such selective use of the provision, and the Committee considered the case to be a close one. The university protested that it did not in fact use, or intend to use, the provision selectively, and it would have been difficult for the Committee to prove otherwise. In the end we settled the matter this way: We secured from the university a statement, in writing, of the university’s intention not to use the provision selectively. That statement is on file in the APA office, to provide a basis for investigation of any future cases, on similar issues, that that university may be involved in.

The Committee urges the Board to consider announcing a clear policy for dealing with such cases, which seem to arise primarily in the setting of schools with religious affiliations.

2. The Committee followed up on the request of a philosopher whose termination a few years ago had brought APA censure on the terminating university. (That university is still under censure.) The philosopher in question pointed out that the university, in spite of censure, was still using APA facilities to hire new faculty members, and no notice of the censure was attached to the listing in Jobs for Philosophers. The philosopher argued that since the APA agreed that his termination was unfair, it ought not to be helping the university to hire his replacement. And he also asked that the APA try to get him reinstated in his job at that university. The Executive Director proposed writing a letter to the university, offering to lift censure if the complaining philosopher was rehired, and the Committee left it at that. We presume action has been taken but have not heard the outcome.

As a consequence of this incident, the Association has taken steps to ensure that censure is more prominently advertised and brought to the attention of job-seekers.

3. In a new matter the Committee considered the complaint of a philosopher who was not renewed at the three-year point. What caught the Committee’s attention in particular was the allegation that the department in question had made a practice of hiring young philosophers and then letting them go at the three-year mark. The instrument for justifying these nonrenewals was said to be a set of standards for retention that were much more stringent than those announced in advance, and in fact (it was claimed) were much more stringent than the standards for renewal customarily used at similar institutions. If candidates are not warned in advance of the standards for renewal, that would be a violation of the principles set down in the AAUP’s "Statement" covering renewal procedures.

The evidence was cloudy in several ways. There was not a clear pattern of nonrenewal, even though several philosophers had been let go in the last ten years at the three-year point. It was also not clear that the department had waffled on the standards to be used, though there was evidence in support of that conclusion. The standards used were clearly higher than those used at many similar schools, but it seemed to us that there is no reason why a department might not tie itself to higher standards, so long as the standards were consistently applied, and candidates were suitably warned. The Committee decided that no action was warranted at this point, but did send the department a letter expressing our concerns, and containing the following paragraphs:

The picture painted [by several witnesses] was distressing: young faculty members, with outstanding beginning publication records, terminated not at the tenure date but after perhaps two and a half years on the [Department] faculty, without any forewarning of the stringent standard that would be applied. Nevertheless we are reluctant at this time to get involved in what is essentially a nonrenewal dispute without clearer evidence of wrongdoing.

The Committee expresses the hope that your Department will fully inform current and future candidates of the standards to be used in the renewal process. If the Department intends to hold candidates to the exceptionally high standard it has apparently used up to now, you have an obligation to make clear to applicants for jobs that it is a high standard.

This letter, too, is on file with the National Office, and the evidence that was collected will be forwarded to the next Committee Chair, for use if the issue should arise again in connection with this school.