Statement on Expressive Activity Policies

In August, the AAUP released an online statement condemning the wave of new restrictions on “expressive activities” enacted by university administrations in response to encampments protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. These policies, which go beyond reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage freedom of expression and can effectively shut down demonstrations. With harsh sanctions for violation, the policies broadly chill student and faculty engagement in protests.

Those who care about higher education and democracy, the statement maintains, should be alarmed by these policies for several reasons. First, they undermine academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression, which are indispensable for the transmission of knowledge, the development of students, and the well-being of democracy. Second, they trample the rights of students as described in the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, issued by the AAUP and other groups in 1967. Third, many of these new policies are being imposed with little to no faculty input. Finally, the policies curtail the rights of faculty and other members of the campus community, who should be free to discuss and debate difficult topics, both inside and outside the classroom. Policies targeting expressive activities are likely to disproportionately affect contingent faculty and graduate student employees, particularly people of color.

The recent proliferation of these restrictive policies seems to be an attempt to appease politicians who are calling for college and university administrators to use a heavy hand against faculty and student protesters. Administrators who claim that expressive activity policies protect academic freedom and student learning, even as they severely restrict its exercise, risk destroying the very freedoms of speech and expression they claim to protest.