The University of Michigan’s Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to discuss the vote on the Academic Affairs Advisory Committee’s resolution on academic freedom and external harassment, continuing discussions from previous meetings.
The resolution calls on the University to create a website with resources for U-M faculty who have been harassed or threatened, establish a unit responsible for supporting targeted faculty and publicly declare its commitment to protecting faculty and academic freedom. SACUA chair Thomas Braun said Luke McCarthy, Faculty Senate Office director, is in the process of creating a ballot for members to vote on the resolution.
“(McCarthy) will create a ballot through simply voting, and so you’ll get an email about a vote, whether or not to approve this document to forward to admin,” Braun said.
McCarthy said he believes SACUA must vote on this resolution soon because it is important to the safety of U-M students and faculty.
“Other than the fact that (this debate) has been going since last April, I think the urgency is (that) a number of people are experiencing both internal and external threats and we don’t know what to do with this, as we’ve seen already,” McCarthy said.
Throughout the meeting, SACUA members worked together to rephrase and restructure parts of the resolution to make it more clear for readers.
Rebekah Modrak, Art & Design professor, said she agreed that the resolution needs to be amended efficiently so it can be voted on as soon as possible. Modrak said there have been multiple rounds of edits to this resolution in the past, and believes it is ready to be voted on.
“I would suggest that we vote on this,” Modrak said. “I do think it would really help in the Senate Assembly to be able to share that information.”
SACUA unanimously approved putting the resolution up for a vote by the U-M community.
“The resolution will now be that the University expands external threat assessment, particularly where it involves faculty,” Braun said.
Daily News Reporter Alexis Spector can be reached at alexissp@umich.edu.