Reading · Academic Freedom on the Line

The Board of Regents for the University of Texas system recently (unanimously and without discussion) passed a policy statement on faculty responsibilities regarding “controversial topics.”

In theory, a policy statement is meant to bring clarity to a situation where individual interpretation may be necessary, but this statement does the opposite, and it makes me glad I’m not a faculty member in the University of Texas system because this policy seems rather likely to achieve the opposite:

Regents Rule 31004 (Rights and Responsibilities of Faculty Members) asserts that “Faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his or her subject…”
This freedom must be balanced by a faculty member’s responsibility to adhere to principles of academic integrity and their duty to protect student rights. This includes the responsibility to:
· foster classroom cultures of trust in which all students feel free to voice their questions and beliefs, especially when those perspectives might conflict with those of the instructor or other students;
· fairly present differing views and scholarly evidence on reasonably disputed matters and unsettled issues;
· equip students to assess competing theories and claims, and to use reason and appropriate evidence to form their own conclusions about course material; and
· eschew topics and controversies that are not germane to the course.”

It’s that last provision that would’ve really been a challenge because the nature of the courses I taught in writing and literature frequently surfaced unpredictable responses that felt interesting and generative in the moment, but which could, at least in theory, run afoul of such a policy.

In fact, one of the most spirited arguments ever in my first-year writing course was about a topic/controversy that could have easily been judged “not germane” to the course.

I’m thinking specifically of a discussion on whether or not Michael Jordan or LeBron James was the greatest basketball player of all-time.

The origins of the argument were germane to the course as the topic came up as part of a broader discussion of the challenge of defining the terms of argument for a subjective question like “Who is the greatest basketball player of all time?”

This is a version of what I called an “impossible argument,” in that coming to a conclusion depended on accepting the underlying premises of the evidence. My opening example for this point is the classic question, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”, a topic that I allowed students to attack from any angle they wished, and one on which we never reached consensus because a definitive ruling is contingent on which evidence you privilege as most dispositive.

When I introduced the greatest basketball player of all-time as another type of “impossible” argument, I joked that this might be a bad example because the answer is actually pretty obvious: Michael Jordan.

A couple of students piped up immediately, “What about LeBron James?”

I scoffed. Ridiculous. This was years ago, when LeBron was in his second stint with Cleveland, having won two titles in Miami, but still a few months short of his first title as a Cavalier. LeBron was great, but also, he was no MJ. MJ never lost a finals series, playoff MVP six times, an absolute killer. LeBron couldn’t win a title until he took his talents to Miami to play with two other all-NBA guys. Sure, Michael had Scottie Pippen, but he also had solid, but unspectacular players like Bill Wennington and John Paxson and Steve Kerr who were elevated to key contributors. Yes, Rodman was there for the second trio of titles, but Rodman never scored. The idea that LeBron was even close to MJ as a player was ridiculous.

I said, if anything, the preeminent challenger would be someone like Bill Russell.

Who’s that?

I realized that my students were in early grade school when Jordan was winning his last title. Michael Jordan was history. Bill Russell, who played his last season the year before I was born, was ancient history.

I introduced my students to Russell’s Basketball Reference page, league MVP five times and NBA champion in 11 of his 13 seasons, including acting as the Celtics coach in the last two. They were impressed, but still, extremely old news, different era, different game, blah blah blah. LeBron was too fast, too strong, dominant.

I called up footage of the kinds of body contact that was allowed during Jordan’s heyday, the so-called “Jordan Rules” the Detroit Pistons deployed. I said that if Jordan played under the current system, he’d average fifty a game.

Did things get heated? Let’s call it spirited. Some other student threw out Kobe’s name, and I could not take it anymore, declaring that “Michael Jordan lite cannot be better than Michael Jordan original.” All in good fun, but also controversial.

Along the way, we discussed different frames one could use to make their case, number of titles, number of MVPs, scoring titles, etc. We agreed that quality of competition was a factor, Russell’s NBA era being a time of considerably more concentrated talent on powerhouses like the Celtics.

We talked about what role aesthetic appreciation might play. I called up a video of Jordan’s greatest baskets, a reel of balletic feats defying gravity. LeBron’s best buckets were more a testament to his physical dominance, a runaway train barreling to the hoop. Awe-inducing, but not the same thing as Jordan’s grace.

I think we had an interesting discussion over the 20 or so minutes we spent on it. Minutes that were unplanned, open, contentious, and in which I clearly revealed my partisan preferences as someone who grew up a Bulls fan. The debate was a running discussion between me and a couple of students for the rest of the semester.

I can’t imagine that this activity would run afoul of the Texas system policy, except that I clearly violated it in several ways. A student would be unlikely to complain about this topic specifically, but what if there was something else they were bent out of shape about, and this became a way to impugn my teaching?

Maybe the powers that be would dismiss this as not a subject where we’re worried about “controversies not germane to the course,” but this only highlights the extreme interpretability of such a broad policy statement.

This policy was not written to clarify or empower, but instead to provide authorities an endlessly adaptable and flexible instrument of control over faculty, a way to gin up a pretense to silence or discipline.

Of course, the obvious and inevitable consequence of such a policy is self-imposed, pre-emptive shutting up lest something unexpected slips out.

Teaching and learning don’t work this way, or it doesn’t work well this way, anyway. Maybe my example seems superfluous, but think about how often something worth learning (by both students and faculty) occurs when an unexpected topic of controversy flares and is discussed in community. Teaching is inevitably improvisational.

Texas wants to end these possibilities, to reduce the potential for unexpected discovery. It’s anti-freedom and anti-education. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

The UT System Creates a Catchall Policy to Preemptively Silence Faculty

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