Marking a year of experiments in shared governance

A month ago I wrapped up my year as president of Emory University’s senate and chair of its faculty council. To mark that moment, I sent the following letter to all of Emory’s regular faculty. This is a good synopsis of what I’ve been doing the past year and I hope an inspiration for all other people out there working on faculty governance and academic freedom.

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April 21, 2026

Dear Emory Faculty,

Two years ago, two days after becoming president-elect of the University Senate, I got arrested for refusing to step away from a scene of police brutality against our own students on our own campus. The past two years have been surreal, with Emory’s administration refusing to admit any wrongdoing against those of us wrongly arrested while we all still shake hands at university functions, as if this is perfectly normal. The experience of being subject to Emory violating its own open expression policy sharpened my resolve to help make Emory the kind of university it can and should be: a school that respects its immensely talented body of faculty, staff, and students, all with commitments to academic freedom, shared governance, and research and teaching in the service of humanity. I have learned from you all how deeply you share these commitments. My aim has been to invite the administration (which keeps seeming to come and go) to be part of this shared project.

This past year as president of the Senate and chair of the Faculty Council, we’ve done some good work:

• opening up meetings for the university community to observe,

• following up on the aftermath of the university shuttering DEI offices,

• calling on leadership to follow Emory’s own policies, namely its open expression policy,

• monitoring the effects of federal directives,

• creating processes for the senate and faculty council to weigh in on policy changes,

• hosting listening sessions for the presidential search, and

• having a voice in the university’s budgeting priorities, including working on equitable compensation and raises .

In meetings with administration, I’ve come to see the source of many of the problems affecting faculty at Emory. One is that, shockingly, there is no university-wide policy for faculty conduct, discipline, and removal of faculty, tenured and untenured alike. Staff have far more protections. The grey book sets limits to firing tenured faculty but doesn’t lay out a clear policy. There is no policy for untenured faculty. As we’ve seen, a highly regarded and longstanding member of our faculty, if untenured, can be fired at will with scant due process. So, in the faculty council, in collaboration with human resources and the provost’s office, we are beginning to work on this.

A second major issue is that the vast majority of Emory’s faculty work in the three health-sciences schools (SOM, SON, and Rollins) and there is no direct line from them to the provost’s office. It’s just, as I’m told, a “dotted line.” The deans of those schools report to Dr, Joon S, Lee, a very kind and able health care administrator but not an academic. This means that faculty who work in the health sciences lack an advocate for their roles as faculty and not just as clinicians; in other words, no one in the upper administration is responsible for looking after health science faculty’s academic freedom, their educational roles, or due process. This is a structural problem, which could be easily fixed, and I hope the current leadership or the next president of the university will take up our repeated requests to do so.

Tomorrow is my last day as president of the Emory University Senate and chair of the Emory University Faculty Council. I then begin my third and final year on the executive committees of those bodies, respectively, as past-president and past chair.

Tomorrow’s senate meeting from 3-4:30 (which you can zoom into here) will end with a “change of guard” during which Jodie Guest will become president of the Senate and chair of the Faculty Council (and take over this email list) and Jehu Hanciles will become president-elect and chair-elect. Jodie and Jehu are both deeply committed to making Emory better. I am proud to work with them. George Shepherd will complete his three years of service in these roles, during which he focused on open expression and making these bodies more geared toward problem solving and action. My immense thanks to George.

Signing off with warm wishes,

Noëlle