In a tense faculty senate meeting Oct. 16, several Northeastern professors expressed deep concern and frustration with recently adopted university freedom of expression and academic freedom policies. After the meeting, the university quietly removed the policy that drew the most significant criticism from faculty.
The policies, which The News first reported on earlier this month, had required faculty to receive permission from the provost’s office if they wished to engage in or organize on-campus demonstrations. Other regulations, which are still in place, impose more strict restrictions on how demonstrations can take place and implement more severe sanctions if Northeastern affiliates violate the university’s policies.
During the 11:45 a.m. Microsoft Teams meeting, Kris Manjapra, a professor of history and global studies, gave a presentation on freedom of expression at Northeastern, saying the institution’s new policies threaten university community members’ ability to express themselves and peacefully protest. Following the presentation, where Manjapra read out a draft resolution to expand protections for peaceful protest and controversial speech, several professors denounced the university’s policies.
The new policies came after a wave of on-campus pro-Palestine demonstrations last year and an encampment in which the university oversaw the arrests of nearly 100 individuals.
“These new policies are already having a chilling effect, especially as sanctions are not spelled out,” Manjapra said during his presentation, referring to a lack of clarity on the consequences faculty could face if they violate university policy. “This threatens to hamper the core competencies of our faculty, research, teaching, care for students and frontline contribution to democratic discourse in society. And what can be done to faculty, certainly, could be done to students and to staff, as the new directives in fact make clear.”
The frustration Manjapra and other professors expressed isn’t unique to Northeastern faculty. It comes as professors across the country have communicated opposition to a slew of new, restrictive expression regulations at higher education institutions that come after pro-Palestinian protests last spring.
Since its initial posting in December 2023, Northeastern’s “Safe Campuses and Civil Discourse” FAQ has functioned as a central site where university community members can find information about specific university policies related to campus demonstrations. Other university demonstration and academic freedom policies are laid out in the university’s Code of Student Conduct, Faculty Handbook and “Policy on Demonstrations” page.
On Oct. 25, the university updated the FAQ page, published by Northeastern Global News, to — among other faculty-related revisions — remove the policy requiring faculty to receive the provost’s permission to participate in demonstrations on campus.
Faculty must still receive permission from the provost to organize demonstrations, according to the page.
The FAQ also includes the points that “Faculty and staff can face disciplinary action and/or other applicable university policies” if they are found in violation of university regulations and that certain demonstration policies can be found in the faculty handbook. According to the handbook, disciplinary measures in response to violations of university regulations could include “a formal letter of reprimand, a reduction of salary increment, a period of suspension (with or without pay) and dismissal from the faculty, or other appropriate sanctions within this range.”
The URL of the FAQ page was also changed, making it more difficult for individuals to view previous versions of the site via internet archival services — a method The News previously used to find significant changes to university policy.
While multiple professors said not enough time was set aside to discuss freedom of speech and expression — a point of heated debate during the meeting — the agenda for the senate’s Oct. 30 meeting will be centered around the topic, Heidi Kevoe-Feldman, chair of the faculty senate’s agenda committee and an associate professor of communication studies, told The News in an interview Oct. 21.
Kevoe-Feldman said she hopes through the Oct. 16 and 30 discussions and future senate actions, the university and its faculty can come to an agreement that addresses faculties’ concerns.
“I am hoping that we can collaborate and move forward,” she said. “I always say Northeastern is a leader in a lot of things, and maybe Northeastern could be a leader in this as well.”
When The News reached out to the university for comment on the concerns faculty raised during the meeting, a senior Northeastern official dismissed the questions.
Northeastern’s Senior Vice President for External Affairs Michael Armini, a member of the university’s senior leadership team, told The News in an April interview that Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun tasked him with overseeing the university’s response to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Responding to whether the university stood by its recently adopted demonstration policies, Armini said in an Oct. 24 email to The News that the question made him “burst out laughing.”
“Are you asking if the university agrees with itself?” he wrote. “This is like me asking you if The Huntington News stands by its editorial policies.”
Three days after his response, the university changed the FAQ.
“Simply amplifying a Reddit post or a Faculty Senate discussion is not journalism,” he wrote later in the email.
‘A deeply offensive threat to academic freedom and freedom of expression’
Following Manjapra’s presentation and resolution, several other faculty members condemned the university’s policies.
“I think that there is concern, that is well founded, that there would be a disposition towards an antagonistic relationship between the administration and faculty and staff exercising entirely appropriate forms of free speech, including protest,” said Matthew Smith, associate professor of philosophy, on the university’s previous policy requiring professors to receive the provost’s permission to participate in demonstrations.
Part of the reasoning behind his belief, Smith said, is that during the pro-Palestine encampment that occurred at Northeastern in April, professors who were attempting to de-escalate the tense situation were reprimanded by a university administrator. Smith said that when he and a group of professors approached Renata Nyul, Northeastern’s vice president for communications, she asked him “Do you know who pays your salary?”
Smith told The News he and Northeastern Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy Jennie Stephens were attempting to find a compromise between “students and administration to avoid arrest” when Nyul allegedly asked the rhetorical question.
Professor of Law Rachel Rosenbloom said that Smith and Stephens “separately told [her] about the comment right after it happened.” Stephens, who is on leave from Northeastern teaching in Ireland, also corroborated in an interview with The News Smith’s recounting of the alleged interaction with Nyul.
“It felt very clearly like an attempt to intimidate us. A threat. The student protest was completely peaceful,” Stephens said in a follow-up email. “I never imagined that a senior administrator would talk to faculty or staff in this way.”
The incident allegedly took place on April 25, the first day of the encampment, Stephens said.
When asked about the incident, Armini, who works closely with Nyul, said she is being targeted because she is Northeastern’s spokesperson.
“Vice President Nyul is a true asset to the university and the work she and her team accomplished during the encampment was exemplary on every level,” Armini wrote. “It is truly unfortunate that – due to her role as the university spokesperson – she has been targeted, doxxed and continues to face unwarranted harassment.”
Armini said that Nyul has received hundreds of threatening emails and phone calls and that both Northeastern and Boston police have needed to provide her with protective services on campus and at her home. Armini did not provide evidence of faculty participating in the harassment and doxxing Nyul faced when asked by The News.
Nyul did not immediately respond to questions on the alleged encounter with Smith and her experience with harassment.
Armini said he would not discuss Smith’s allegation, and while some commended the university’s handling of the encampment, others, including over 100 student organizations and 400 university affiliates, levied strong criticism toward Northeastern’s response.
Members of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, a group of pro-Palestine Northeastern professors, alleged in a May op-ed for The News that a similar incident had taken place. As of May 3, the op-ed had been signed by 432 individuals.
“On the morning of April 25, a representative of the senior administration spoke to two faculty members in a highly agitated manner, saying, ‘You seem to have forgotten where your paycheck comes from,’” the op-ed reads.
“I took that as a thinly veiled threat,” Smith said. “I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t take that as a thinly veiled threat. If that is the attitude of some of the highest members of our administration towards faculty who are merely standing … pastorally with their students who are protesting, I would hate to think about what the attitude would be if, say, a faculty member without the approval of the provost participated in a similar fashion.”
Karl Klare, a professor of law, called the requirement of faculty to receive the provost’s permission to engage in peaceful advocacy a “deeply offensive threat to academic freedom and freedom of expression.”
“No self-respecting academic can accept such a policy or feel comfortable in an institution that adopts it,” he said. “Good luck recruiting top faculty once candidates become aware of this policy.”
Klare also said that if Northeastern were a public institution, aspects of its policy on demonstrations would be “constitutionally suspect and illegal absent the most unusual circumstances.”
He specifically said the university’s demonstration policy imposes “a prior restraint on speech” and called into question the extent to which the university can impose its regulations on public property, such as public sidewalks or streets, that are also on Northeastern’s campuses.
Other professors criticized the university’s Safe Campuses and Civil Discourse FAQ for providing students resources to report faculty for “political advocacy or bias.”
“It seems like we are actually now asking our students to serve as police officers for what might be said in class and reporting their professor for what they might view as a political bias,” Northeastern School of Law professor Margaret Hahn-DuPont said. “Is it actually conceivable that we would be able to teach what we need to teach completely free from how our subject matters might be affected by politics or affect politics.”
Near the end of the meeting, professor of history and College of Social Sciences and Humanities Senator Louise Walker said she was worried about Northeastern’s actions during the encampment last spring. She mentioned potentially creating an ad hoc committee or writing a report reflecting on Northeastern’s previous actions, its demonstration policies and the future of freedom of expression at the university.
“I’m very worried about the university administration’s actions in the spring, calling the police, for example,” Walker said. “And I’m also worried about the future.”
What can the faculty senate do?
One possible action the senate could take is to adopt a resolution updating the faculty handbook with revised text, which is subject to approval from both Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan and the Northeastern Board of Trustees. According to its website, the handbook is “a living document providing useful policy information most pertinent to University governance and faculty rights.”
During his presentation, Manjapra read a draft resolution proposing the university revise the faculty handbook’s freedom of speech policy to better align with that of the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP. The AAUP outlines specific protections for extramural speech, controversial speech and peaceful protest.
If adopted, the draft resolution includes language that prohibits retaliation or intimidation “in any form whatsoever by officers of the university including by administrators and by police.”
While there are several places that lay out Northeastern’s demonstration policies — such as the university’s “Policy on Demonstrations” page and its “Safe Campuses, Civil Discourse” FAQ page — regulations for faculty mainly exist within the faculty handbook. While the handbook broadly discusses academic freedom and freedom of expression throughout, the topic is largely outlined in two sections titled “Academic Freedom” and “Rights and Responsibilities.”
While the two modules lay out general protections for faculty’s ability to extramurally express themselves, teach certain material and debate controversial issues, the modules don’t detail specific protections for demonstration and peaceful protest.
“The language of freedom of speech in our handbook is weak and it is out of date,” Manjapra said during the meeting.
Per the faculty senate’s procedures, only the senate’s committees can propose resolutions, so the resolution Manjapra presented could not be voted on during the meeting, Kevoe-Feldman told The News. In September, Kevoe-Feldman said, the faculty handbook committee was charged with updating the handbook’s policies on intellectual property and academic freedom.
The resolution Manjapra read has no formal authority outside of being read into the record and used for discussion, but it could be used as part of the handbook committee’s deliberations on its own resolution regarding revisions to the handbook, Kevoe-Feldman said.
Kevoe-Feldman said the draft resolution was forwarded to the handbook committee for internal discussion. The committee could discuss the resolution, taking faculty input during meetings into account to form and propose its own resolution, she said. But it’s not clear when it will propose a formal resolution to the full senate for a vote.
Once voted on by the senate, the resolution is then subject to approval by Madigan and the university’s Board of Trustees. Madigan, who was present during the Oct. 16 meeting, did not respond to a request for an interview or comment.
The university’s recently clarified demonstration policies were not added to the university’s faculty handbook, which is the purview of the faculty senate, but rather the FAQ published by Northeastern Global News under the university’s external affairs department and a policy page overseen by Northeastern’s Policy Oversight Committee.
Neither appear to be subject to broad, faculty-wide discussion, unlike a revision to the faculty handbook. Armini said in an email to The News his team “does not consult with faculty when producing FAQs.” New university policies can be proposed by individual departments, colleges, schools or institutes and are subject to review by the Policy Oversight Committee and approval from Northeastern’s senior leadership, president or, in some cases, Board of Trustees.
While the FAQ isn’t the official home for Northeastern’s policies, the university has encouraged both The News and community members to refer to the site for vital information about the institution’s regulations.
In response to a follow-up question as to why the university updated the FAQ, Armini wrote in an Oct. 26 email that the university “occasionally make[s] edits.”
“All of our FAQs are time stamped at the top of the page. This is to provide transparency because we do occasionally make edits,” he wrote. “For example, during Covid if our masking or testing policies changed, the FAQ was updated accordingly.”
This story was updated at 4:15 p.m. to include additional, corroborating information about Professors Matthew Smith and Jennie Stephens’s alleged encounter with Vice President for Communication Renata Nyul.
