Gagging Academia
The right to teach, debate and protest faces a high-stakes challenge in Pittsburgh’s universities and beyond.
Before negotiations began for a collective bargaining agreement between the University of Pittsburgh and its graduate workers union, Lauren Wewer said it was a “no-brainer” to students that academic freedom would be addressed in a contract.
“Right away, this was kind of one of those main topics,” the Ph.D. candidate said. “You always bargain over health and safety, and for academics, this is [also] really important.”
Academic freedom has been in the spotlight this year as the second Trump administration has wielded federal funding to push colleges and universities toward a conservative agenda. Unions provide an avenue for those in higher ed to push back.
Wewer is chair of the union’s bargaining committee and was heavily involved in organizing efforts before an election last November in which students overwhelmingly voted in favor of unionizing with the United Steelworkers (USW). Since bargaining began in February, she said, their desires to have academic freedom and an inclusive workplace solidified in a contract have been consistently ignored by Pitt’s representatives.
What is academic freedom?
There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of the term. Many academics point to a 1940 American Association of University Professors’ statement in which the concept is defined through three pillars:
- Teachers’ freedom to research and publish findings
- Teachers’ freedom to discuss relevant issues in the classroom
- Teachers’ freedom to express views as private citizens without censorship or discipline from their employer
Students are notably absent from this evaluation. Academic freedom, as it relates to students, is generally thought to involve the freedom to learn, but that is open to interpretation.
“Academic freedom is an ideal that people have fought hard for, and it’s still elusive,” University of Georgia higher education professor Timothy Cain said.
The university’s position is simple, according to spokesperson Jared Stonesifer.
“Graduate students are not faculty members and therefore academic freedom is not applicable,” he wrote in response to questions from Pittsburgh’s Public Source. Pitt’s rules for grad students, who are also teaching assistants or fellows, state that the “ultimate responsibility for all research and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh rests with the faculty, not graduate students in the bargaining unit.”
With both sides at an impasse, students question whether they will secure what they deem critical protections.
Abstract but important
When Pitt’s grad students voted to unionize, supporters talked largely of pay, vacation and health insurance. Academic freedom, though, hit the table early.
To date, the grad union has submitted two proposals on academic freedom. The first was presented in March, and outlined freedom in research, teaching, learning and extramural speech, which involves anything outside of the university.
According to the union’s bargaining tracker, Pitt’s representatives rejected this proposal twice — once in April and again in May. Pitt’s website with bargaining updates doesn’t mention any rejections.
The university updates its bargaining tracker after each bargaining session and posts all of Pitt’s proposals, Stonesifer wrote to Public Source.
Wewer said bargaining committee members were told by Pitt negotiators that grad students didn’t “have or deserve” academic freedom because they don’t do independent research or work, a claim that she said has “riled up” students.
“We do teach independently,” she said. “We are instructors of record, so we are the ones creating the lectures, homeworks, the tests, the quizzes. We teach without anyone’s supervision.”
Whether grad students are entitled to academic freedom — enough to justify adding this into a collective bargaining agreement — is complicated, said William Herbert, executive director at the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education.
“One hand, they’re employees, and [on] the other hand, they’re students,” he said. Academic freedom usually refers to the right for faculty members to teach and research concepts without fear of retribution. It extends to students only in their right to learn.
How that line is drawn varies between schools, and not every collective bargaining agreement results in a resolution on academic freedom, according to Herbert. But this doesn’t mean a grad contract including a section on the topic is “beyond the pale.”
Therefore, Herbert said that any academic freedom provision in a grad union contract would apply solely to work grad students are paid for, rather than their positions as students.
At the beginning of last year, he said the center’s database identified 23 union contracts involving grad students that included such clauses. Some of these were at private, selective institutions such as Brown University and the University of Chicago, but also public schools like the University of Oregon.
To deny grad students collective bargaining rights, some universities — backed by a now-overturned 2004 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision — have argued that unionizing would negatively impact academic freedom.
Universities contend that because grad students have historically been viewed as students rather than employees, their unionization would intrude on decisions related to “who, what and where to teach or research.”
Studies have disputed this claim, and in 2016 the NLRB reversed the previous ruling and allowed grad students at private universities to unionize.
After two rejections, Pitt’s grad union submitted a revised proposal in July, titling it “Just Cause in the Exercise of Professional Judgment.” All mentions of the term “academic freedom” were removed, along with a “freedom in learning” bullet point.
The union’s tracker states that university representatives rejected the new proposal the following month.
“Graduate students are not faculty members and therefore academic freedom is not applicable.”jared stonesifer
On Oct. 9, grad students sat in on a bargaining session and read out testimonies about the importance of protecting academic freedom. Public Source was not given access to these statements.
Wewer recounted the session, saying grad students asked Pitt to “stand with their workers” on this topic. The union subsequently resubmitted the July proposal, hoping students’ stories would sway administrators to consider engaging with the issue. Pitt has yet to respond with a rejection or a counter, although Wewer said the committee has reminded them in every session since then.
What’s first: economics or expression?
Earlier this summer, union-covered grad students were informed they wouldn’t get a cost-of-living raise for the new academic year, setting off rallies and other organized actions aimed at getting the university to change course.
Pitt Provost Joseph McCarthy said in a campus message that the lack of a raise was because neither side could reach an agreement on how to handle stipends during negotiations. State law doesn’t allow for changes in compensation while negotiations are underway without an agreement between both parties.
Wewer viewed this as a tactic to prolong bargaining and demoralize students, saying the stagnant pay has impacted union members’ work and livelihoods.
“We’d really like this to speed up,” she said.
Both sides resumed negotiations over a raise on Nov. 25, days after Public Source and Wewer spoke. An agreement hasn’t been reached yet.
Stonesifer wrote that Pitt is “dedicated to bargaining in good faith and will review all proposals from the grad student union thoroughly and respond accordingly.” He added that some of the union’s demands — particularly inclusive workplace provisions — relate to matters already included in university policy or governed by federal or state laws.
Graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh line up for a unionization vote on Nov. 18, 2024. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
Unions generally hold that before any progress can be made on topics like pay and health insurance, which are classified as “economic items” for a contract, “non-economic items” must be settled. That includes academic freedom.
Sean O’Brien, an academic services officer at Wayne State University, has led negotiations for a few grad student contracts at his university and serves as a committee member for Higher Education Labor United, a national collective of campus workers.
He described academic freedom as a “contested space at the grad negotiation table,” in part because of the dual roles many graduate students hold on campus as students and employees.
“So many times when a grad local is at the bargaining table, the university administrators’ negotiators will stop and say, ‘Oh no, no, no, that’s a student issue. That’s not an employee issue,’” to shut down negotiation, O’Brien said.
It’s an example of a line that some grad students at Pitt feel has been used to deny them important rights in an effort to keep them “silent and compliant.”
“The good news is we have never stayed silent,” said a grad bargaining committee member at an April higher ed rally in Schenley Plaza.
With items like academic freedom still unsettled, Wewer said there is always more organizing for students to do. She called the voice of the collective the most powerful tool at the union’s disposal.
“It’d be impossible to kind of maintain an environment conducive to learning and research if we are just constantly worried about being disciplined for our teaching methods or any research decisions,” she said. “It’ll completely impact how we work and how the Pitt community operates.”
Maddy Franklin reports on higher ed for Pittsburgh’s Public Source, in partnership with Open Campus, and can be reached at madison@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Bella Markovitz.
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