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Policy Number: 3.50
Effective Date: August 31, 2023
Revision History: Reviewed May 26, 2016
Policy Contact: Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs/Provost
I. Purpose and Policy Statement
As a public institution of higher education and in accordance with Board of Regents Policy Manual 6.5.1 Academic Freedom, Georgia Gwinnett College (“GGC”) is committed to protecting the academic freedom rights of its faculty and students in teaching, research, publishing, and other academic activities. GGC is committed to vigorously promoting the open exchange of ideas and protecting academic freedom on its campus.
GGC values diversity of intellectual thought and expression for all. While faculty and students must be encouraged to exercise their rights to academic freedom, they must also understand that, along with those rights comes the responsibility to respect the individuality and beliefs of all. Members of the GGC community should always seek to foster and defend intellectual honesty, freedom of inquiry, and instruction on and off campus.
Academic freedom is a bedrock of higher education, but it is not unlimited. Faculty academic freedom extends only to classroom material and discussions, research, publications, and other academic activities that are germane to the subject matter being taught, researched, written about, or presented. Faculty members must be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matters that have no relation to their subject.
Students should be provided an environment conducive to learning, be free from faculty or institutional coercion to make personal political or social choices, and be evaluated based on their academic performance, not factors that are irrelevant to that performance such as their personal beliefs. Similarly, faculty and staff have the right to be unburdened by irrelevant factors such as ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, and should instead be hired and evaluated based on relevant factors such as their achievement and the success of students.
Finally, faculty hold a special position in the community that carries both privileges and obligations. Because faculty are scholars and educators, the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Therefore, faculty should always strive to be accurate, exercise appropriate restraint, show respect for the opinions of others, and make every effort when they are expressing their personal opinions to indicate that they are speaking for themselves as private citizens rather than on behalf of GGC.
This commitment to protecting the academic freedom rights of all faculty and students, as well as ensuring that all faculty and students respect the academic freedom rights of others, is crucial to GGC and to the University System of Georgia’s mission of providing the best educational opportunities to all Georgians.
II. Scope
All GGC faculty should be familiar with this policy.
III. Related Regulations, Statutes, Policies, and Procedures
Board of Regents Policy Manual 6.5 Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom
Board of Regents Statement of Principles Regarding Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression
AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
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