Bucking up against many fellow liberals in academia, a professor in the University of North Carolina System recently defended a new policy requiring that all course syllabi be made public.
The transparency policy, which went into effect in January, has drawn backlash from, among others, the North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors. The group says the policy will make professors targets of political attacks and doxxing.
But Michael Behrent, a professor of history at Appalachian State University and former leader of the conference, supports the policy.
Writing at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, the self-described liberal referred to the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau to make his case:
For Rousseau, the only freedom worthy of its name is one in which we are willing to subject our personal views to public scrutiny. This does not mean that the tyranny of the majority should prevail, but neither should we see academic work as a purely esoteric pursuit that publicly funded bodies have mysteriously opted to support.
In the name of defending academic freedom, the NC AAUP petition undermines its public anchoring. It conceives of teaching as a proprietary activity—that is, as the private property of professors rather than an activity whose very purpose is its service to the public. Many academics have bemoaned the fact that, in recent years, public institutions have been privatized in various ways—through the commercialization of college athletics, the outsourcing of academic programs, and the rise of an administrative caste more concerned with their CEO-like career prospects than with loyalty to their institutions. It is disappointing to see the AAUP, an organization with such a long history of promoting public higher education, succumbing to these regrettable trends.
Behrent also said professors should be more open to publicly defending what they teach:
The final reason why the syllabus policy is necessary is that faculty need to be willing to stand before the public. What surprises me about the NC AAUP petition is how completely it goes against professors’ core instincts. Academia is an ego-based profession. Our grad-school mentors teach us to brag; universities give awards for everything; many faculty use their email signatures to tout their publications and accomplishments. It takes a public-records request from a conservative think tank to make us modest.
More seriously, if we want to defend the embattled professoriate, we need to double-down on our commitment to the public—and not hide from it. It is well known that public confidence in higher education has plummeted, in large part because professors are seen as promoting their own views. I believe that the vast majority of my colleagues are not pushing an ideological agenda and are genuinely committed to educating students and promoting knowledge. But to make this case, we must be willing to defend our work in the court of public opinion.
Read his op-ed at the Martin Center.
