Attack on freedom of speech? Some U faculty oppose Board of Regents resolution limiting public statements

Several University of Minnesota faculty members say they feel muzzled by a new Board of Regents resolution that they say could limit academic freedom and speech.

A petition signed by more than 400 U academics asked the board to retract the resolution, which could be approved as early as Friday. Introduced in mid-February, it concerns who is allowed to officially speak for the U and what kinds of issues they can address. The University Senate, a governing body at the U made up of faculty, staff and students, also has passed a resolution asking the Board of Regents to rescind the resolution.

Universities across the country have been debating issues related to academic freedom over the past several years, some brought to the forefront after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and the resulting protests and public outcry.

Inside Higher Ed, a news outlet following higher education issues, estimated that more than 140 universities had implemented institutional neutrality policies since the conflict in the Middle East began compared to fewer than 10 that had policies before then.

In Minnesota, some U faculty members said they believed the Regents were effectively prohibiting “units,” such as departments, schools, institutes or centers, from making any statements “addressing matters of public concern or public interest,” something they say is part of their job as professors and subject-matter experts.

The resolution said units aren’t allowed to make such statements on official U letterhead, websites or social media. It also said the U’s president is the only one who can make institutional statements or permit others to make them.

The Board of Regents has updated its resolution since February. The new one allows units to make institutional statements with the president’s permission and to address public matters only if the president determines those matters have an “actual or potential” impact on the U.

While many faculty, staff and students saw the first resolution as a “blanket ban” on statements about public matters, the new version sets up the U’s president “in a position of censor-in-chief” with the power to decide which group can say what and when, said Karen Ho, an anthropology professor.

“Units need to reserve the right to make institutional speech,” Ho said, adding that the resolution makes the president a “lightning rod” and puts her “in a bad place.”

Board of Regents chair Janie Mayeron declined an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune. But Mayeron and vice chairs Mike Kenyanya and Doug Huebsch penned commentary in the Star Tribune on March 3.

“We want to make it abundantly clear that the proposed resolution takes care to endorse free speech and academic freedoms of individuals,” they wrote. “The guiding principles we have advanced enthusiastically affirm and defend the rights of those engaged in scholarly activity to research, publish, teach, speak or write on matters of public concern or public interest.”

At February’s Board of Regents meeting, members discussed the first version of the resolution. Regent Robyn Gulley said it was vague and unclear.

“[We] could have used a scalpel, but we used a bulldozer,” she said.

Gulley said Wednesday that her comment still stands.

At the February meeting, protesters with Students for a Democratic Society carried signs saying the resolution was an attack on both freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Juliet Murphy, an SDS spokesperson, said recently in a text message to a reporter that the updated resolution is even more concerning because it allows speech by faculty groups on public issues if the U’s president OKs it.

“We are worried about how this will affect free speech at the university going forward. We stand with our faculty completely,” she said.

In the months after the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, several groups of academics at the U posted statements on their departments' websites. In early February, then-Interim President Jeff Ettinger received a letter signed by 26 legislators requesting removal of the statements, but they were not taken down, according to a U report.

Protests on the campus reinvigorated old debates about the lines between free speech and making sure students feel safe.

Reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia rose at colleges across the country, and the U.S. Department of Education opened more than 100 investigations into allegations of discrimination.

In May 2024, U administrators established a faculty-led task force “charged with developing and recommending appropriate policies related to institutional statements on matters of public concern,” according to a U report. In January, that group — the President’s Task Force on Institutional Speech — issued a final report and recommendations.

Michael Gallope, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, said U faculty also asked a Faculty Senate committee to come up with a report and recommendations related to units issuing statements about matters of public concern.

Then the President’s Task Force was charged by U officials with using the Faculty Senate’s committee’s recommendations to develop a policy, he said. That policy allowed units — and groups of people within units — to make statements about public matters, though those statements weren’t intended to be institutional speech. The University Senate overwhelmingly passed the task force’s policy in December 2024.

Gallope said both of the Regents’ resolutions pose a threat to faculty members’ freedom of speech as well as their academic freedom, which the board must uphold according to its code of conduct.

“The Board of Regents does not have the authority to regulate groups of community members associating with each other and giving statements,” he said. “The resolution was written in a way that was very broad and seemed to capture a whole bunch of speech that isn’t seeking to represent the institution.”

Gallope and several other faculty members said they believed the board should have used the Presidential Task Force’s policy to guide its own resolution.

Liliana Zaragoza, a professor of clinical law at the U Law School, said the board’s updated resolution infringes on faculty members' First Amendment rights because it allows the president to pick which statements are acceptable.

And because the board is acting as the state, it is also prohibited by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution from making “vague or overbroad” laws. She said the resolution is vague because it’s not clear what terms such as “units” and “matters of public concern and interest” actually mean.

For instance, is the law clinic she’s the director of considered “a unit” and could the resolution prevent the clinic — which offers free legal services — from making legal filings or speaking with reporters? As it’s written, she thinks it could.

She said while regents have said they believe the resolution protects individual rights, universities are places where faculty and staff work together in groups.

“The ability to speak as units of people who have come together [is] one of the points of an academic institution,” she said.

There’s still an opportunity to take the resolution back and let the President’s Task Force policy take effect, she said.

“The amended resolution just doesn’t address the [constitutional] defects they’ve been on notice about,” she said. “In some respects, it’s more obtuse, more vague.”