Iowa City Press Citizen, IA
05-16-07
Faculty revisit academic freedom policies
By Brian Morelli
Iowa City Press-Citizen
Proposed policy revisions on sexually explicit material in class and academic freedom have University of Iowa faculty dissecting wording and rewriting parts.
Faculty objected to a change in the sexual material policy that would let students seek alternative coursework or drop the class without penalty rather than view sexual acts that were part of class.
Faculty Council members objected Tuesday, saying in some fields such as medicine and art witnessing sex is necessary.
"You've got to see it," Faculty Senate past-president Sheldon Kurtz said. "You can't let a student drop the course because they don't want to see sex."
During a special session of Faculty Council, an executive branch of the governing Faculty Senate, faculty members proposed different versions of both policies. The policies were being revised to remove redundancy and to create matching codes for the three regent universities.
For the sexually explicit material policy, faculty proposed falling back to the standing UI policy. This would require support from faculties at the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University.
The academic freedom policy, which drew criticism from the Faculty Senate last month, would require professors to disassociate themselves from the university when making public comments and identifies what should and should not be discussed in the classroom. As proposed, the policy is too vague, faculty say.
In their version, faculty yanked the statement "at all times be accurate, exercise appropriate restraint, show respect for the opinions of others." They feared that such language could be misinterpreted and used to fire targeted faculty.
These policies were drawn up by the provost's offices at UI, ISU and UNI as part of an update for chapter six in the policy manual. Revisions would go back through the provost's offices before being sent to the Iowa state Board of Regents for approval.
Regents tabled a vote to adopt the revised chapter at their May board meeting because of UI faculty concerns and new regents who said they hadn't time to review it. It is expected to come up at the June regents meeting.
At the faculty meeting Tuesday, Lisa Troyer, a representative from the provost's office, said there was some resistance from the board office to changing the language.
Regent Executive Director Gary Steinke, when contacted Tuesday night, said faculty have the opportunity to recommend changes.
"I am not doing anything on the policy until I get the faculty recommendation from all three schools," Steinke said.