Academic freedom is a foundational value of our liberal arts college, and a constitutional pillar of everything we do in our teaching, scholarship, research and service. Although the handbook states as much, there is no path of recourse for academic freedom infringement at Middlebury and no committee, administrative position or organization dedicated exclusively to this issue.
We see ourselves as offering a sounding board, brainstorming, and sometimes action when colleagues encounter a potential infringement on academic freedom. We’re not an activist group or a structured organization, and are not affiliated with other local or national organizations even if we might have overlapping interests. We see ourselves as a nucleus to coalesce concerns about academic freedom – and to give some assurance that colleagues with doubts or concerns have somebody to talk to.
The role of the Academic Freedom Working Group is to focus exclusively on local issues – meaning issues of academic freedom at Middlebury. As we have seen from examples during the past few years, these could be related to policies, initiatives or proposals coming from administration, faculty committees or colleagues. Our mission does not include: issuing open letters and statements about world events or even about academic freedom issues at other institutions, issuing statements of support or condemnation of political figures or world events, delving into labor or union issues insofar as they don’t pertain directly to academic freedom.
In terms of action, we will limit ourselves to things like faculty motions, petitioning the administration and similar. We might occasionally make our position known, strictly on issues of academic freedom at Middlebury, in a more public venue such as the Campus. These are actions that any colleague could take when faced with an issue of academic freedom, but of course they will be more impactful coming from a group. In other words, we would be more reactive than programmatically active.
We encourage colleagues to contact us at academicfreedom@middleburycollege.onmicrosoft.com to join the group.