Slippage

Listed below are examples of teaching practices that likely warrant greater consideration by professional peers. The list is not exhaustive. The examples are actual, not hypothetical, based on the author’s observations over a period of approximately 25 years of university teaching. Because they are indicative of slippage, there is generally scant research literature about the examples, except where noted. Many of the examples illustrate behaviour that many academics would find problematic (Braxton et al. Reference Braxton, Proper and Bayer2011). The examples are not limited to one department, field, institution, or occurrence.

I do not assert that the sampling of behaviour merits sanction at face value. Nor do I assert that the behaviours are idiosyncratic. Instead, they are offered as illustrations of practices by higher-education instructors that occur with sufficient regularity to justify further review.

Slippage in the exercise of professional control in teaching includes:

• • Regular classroom use of profanity. This is differentiated from the idiosyncratic use of such language as hyperbole, emphasis, or quotation.

• • Denigrating groups or social categories of people, including whites, on behalf of social justice ideologies, for example, that privilege activism over education.

• • Denigrating departmental colleagues during class or advising likewise serves political aims at a cost to education.

• • Social activist or advocacy rhetoric in the classroom, where activism is understood as ‘intentional action by an [instructor] to bring about social or political change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of a controversial argument’ (Brenman and Sanchez Reference Brenman, Sanchez and Michalos2014: 6012).

• • Indoctrination, wherein an instructor ‘promulgate[s] as truth ideas or opinions which have not been tested’ (Dewey Reference Dewey1902: 4), i.e., ‘which have not been accepted as true within a discipline’ (American Association of University Professors 2015a: 20; also American Association of University Professors 2015b, especially p. 382).

• • Heavy usage of films/movies/clips that are tenuously tied to a course or weakly integrated into content.

• • Playing music (to which students are attuned) before class and/or during break-out group activities during class. The practice purportedly attempts to create a ‘solidarity’ between instructor and students without due consideration of its educational value or its chance at aggravating, rather than quelling, anxiety for which its use might be aimed.

• • Misuse of classroom time. For example, playing an instrument in a non-music, non-arts course for students every Friday. Or, using the first 20 minutes of a 75-minute period for ‘frankly speaking’, a time set aside for students to talk about ‘what’s on their minds’ apart from anything related to the course. Or, using a Spanish language class to teach students about Spanish siestas, in which students are asked to put their heads down on their desks with the classroom lights turned off for the class period.

• • No attendance policy, but conferral of course credit and passing grades. This is problematic particularly in those national contexts in which institutional accreditation is based partly on conferral of ‘credit hours’ through student course attendance.

• • Regular dismissal of class such that a class is held only for roughly half the period (e.g., a 75-minute class held regularly for 30 or 40 minutes).

• • Regular cancelling of class.

• • Regular unpreparedness for class.

• • Assigning a teaching assistant a majority or near-majority of teaching responsibility.

• • Grade inflation (Johnson Reference Johnson2003; Rojstaczer and Healy Reference Rojstaczer and Healy2010, Reference Rojstaczer and Healy2012).

• • Departmental tolerance/acceptance of ‘non-rigorous’ courses, that is, courses generally understood to be ‘easy’, undemanding, or not substantive (Arum and Roksa Reference Arum and Roksa2011).

• • Routine failure to report student plagiarism (because, for example, it is perceived as too much trouble or results in what is thought to be minimal sanction).

• • ‘Light’, non-rigorous annual reviews of graduate students; allowing students who exhibit perennial deficiencies to continue in a program without being redressed for their performance.

• • Hugging certain students of a course, such as on the last day of the term.

Scott (Reference Scott2017) has noted that fields evince tensions about what constitutes acceptable work. For Scott, a path through such tension is the exercise of academic freedom itself: discuss, debate, disagree, provisionally resolve. But in many instances, there is little or no engagement among faculty about matters such as those listed above.

Slippage may occur out of deference to academic freedom. Faculty give a wide berth to their colleagues in what they say and do in the classroom. But a berth can be only so wide before it crosses a boundary of quality. Abuse of academic freedom includes utterances and activities in which no expertise is shared. A thread running through several of the illustrations is the absence of sharing expertise. One cannot share expertise, for example, if one is not present.

A profession that regulates itself poorly sacrifices its status, its jurisdictional mandate, and consequently, its public trust. Abridged of public trust, a profession loses its licence and mandate (Hughes Reference Hughes1958). These conditions weaken the academic profession’s defence of legitimate claims to academic freedom. Slippage erodes faculty power in assertions of autonomy.

I offer three theories to explain slippage in the oversight of higher education teaching. First, a theory of innocence posits that behaviours such as those above, and indeed nearly all behaviours of higher-education instructors, are protected by academic freedom. By this theory, academics believe they can say and do almost anything in the classroom, because what they do is consonant with academic freedom. By this theory, academic freedom and freedom of speech are identical principles. The theory has credence through the likelihood that many academics lack an understanding of academic freedom. Academic freedom is never taught to faculty members and is rarely even discussed among them.

Second, a theory of normalized deviance posits that a system of professional work is corrupt. Not only are low standards common, but behaviour antithetical to good practice is accepted (Sykes Reference Sykes1988). By this theory, reporting infractions is the problem, not the infraction. Reporting constitutes non-conformity with deviance that is normalized. Non-reporting is widespread, and faculty do not report problems out of fear that their practices, too, would be scrutinized.

Accordingly, a disengagement compact exists among faculty. Faculty leave each other alone while knowing that practices among them exist outside the boundaries of quality. Regulating one another might result in higher-quality teaching practices, but might also create ill will. Although compatible with how professional work is set up, regulation is a constraint on freedom, including the freedom to engage in practices of little or no quality. It is easier not to regulate one another, unless a practice is so egregious that it leaves the domain of academic freedom (e.g., sexual harassment, assault). The academic profession evinces an unwillingness to make honest assessments about the quality of academic work (Hermanowicz Reference Hermanowicz2021). This pattern is related to a third theory.

A theory of self-interest holds that academics operate to maximize their time on behalf of their preferred professional and personal activities. Academic work is highly competitive and requires significant amounts of time to perform at high levels. By this theory, policing one’s colleagues is understood and communicated collectively as a low priority and subordinate to the interests of advancement in one’s work and accrual of recognition (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1984a, Reference Bourdieu1984b; Merton Reference Merton and Storer1973 [Reference Merton and Storer1957]). Indirect evidence in support of this theory is the value academics assign to service work for departments and universities. Faculty typically perform this work resignedly, understanding that it is defined as less rewarding than teaching and research. Compliance with the work is recognized as a betrayal of self-interest on behalf of the interests of the whole. Generally, faculty seek to minimize this type of work.

Overreach

At the same time, overreach also occurs in control by professional peers. In the present historical period, this pattern occurs in conjunction with ‘identity politics’, which involve ‘groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity [who] promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger […] group’ (Patterson Reference Patterson2006). Identity politics are linked to ‘social justice’, which involves a correction of past wrongs against specific groups in society. Social justice and identity politics have enveloped present-day higher education (Patai and Koertge Reference Patai and Koertge2003).

Listed below are examples of overreach that likely warrant greater consideration by professional peers. Many, but not all, of the illustrations are connected to identity politics and social justice. Because the behaviours exemplify ‘active’ as opposed to ‘passive’ conduct, instances are more documentable with a literature compared to slippage. As with slippage, the list is non-exhaustive, and the same caveats hold: the examples are actual, not limited to one department or occurrence, and I do not assert that the sampling merits sanction at face value. Rather, the examples illustrate practices that occur with a regularity to warrant further review.

Practices of overreach in the control of teaching include:

• • Seeking to terminate or terminating a faculty member for classroom utterances/activities perceived as controversial (Adler and Adler Reference Adler, Adler and Hermanowicz2021).

• • Mandating or strongly advising content in a course (cf. American Association of University Professors 2015c).

• • Specifying language/terms to use in classroom discussions, such as of race or gender (American Psychological Association 2021).

• • Self-censoring classroom speech out of fear, for example, of student accusation or institutional punishment (Lukianoff and Haidt Reference Lukianoff and Haidt2018).

• • Dis-inviting campus speakers whose views on past subjects offend students and/or faculty members. While invited speakers often speak in auditoriums rather than classrooms per se, they engage in a form of teaching (Gup Reference Gup2017; Gillman and Chemerinsky Reference Gillman and Chemerinsky2017).

• • Creating lists of texts to ban from classroom use (Flaherty Reference Flaherty2014; Flood Reference Flood2014).

• • Procedures for hiring faculty members wherein institutions require candidates to submit statements that explain teaching (and other activities) they undertake on behalf of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (Price Reference Price2020; Thompson Reference Thompson2019). The practice is tantamount to an ideological and politically motivated loyalty oath.

• • Overvaluing course evaluations (and thereby not permitting a faculty member to conduct a course in accord with educational principles) in determining annual salary adjustments, among other rewards (e.g., Cashin Reference Cashin and Seldin1999; Pounder Reference Pounder2007; Spooren et al. Reference Spooren, Brockx and Mortelmans2013).

Overreach is not to be confused with ‘collective academic freedom’, the exercise of decisions by academic bodies. For example, faculty have a collective responsibility for curriculum through channels of institutional governance. And, for instance, in some institutions, faculty committees are charged with furnishing to a unit head annual salary recommendations for colleagues, and so on.

Collective academic freedom makes significant assumptions about unity of group goals and group knowledge about governance. For example, faculty members may be ill-informed about problems inherent in student evaluations of courses and their misuse in faculty evaluation procedures. Members of curriculum committees ratify courses on the basis of proposals which often consist of general topical outlines, statements of learning objectives and requirements. In practice, these proposals are only a sketch of the courses that faculty members subsequently teach. In principle, collective academic freedom operates to protect the interests of faculty members as a group. In instances, group goals override individual preferences. By contrast, overreach involves the violation of both individual and collective academic freedom, as the list above illustrates.

I offer two theories to explain overreach in professional control of higher-education teaching. First, a theory of moralism, situated in a climate of social justice and identity politics, venerates emotion in the evaluation of utterances and activities. Moralism exists in a state of heightened sensitivity to subjectivities. Evaluation of utterances and activities is predicated not on due process but on whether a person conforms to prevailing ideological currents that render someone a good or bad person (e.g., Bérubé and Ruth Reference Bérubé and Ruth2022). Control of language by professional peers and others is the chief means by which moralism is put into operative play (Hermanowicz and Hermanowicz Reference Hermanowicz and Hermanowicz2023).

Second, a theory of bureaucracy holds that behaviour is guided by perception of organizational rules. Members of groups ‘go along’ with the rules without challenging them, and without recognizing that rules are created, at any given time, by people responsive to historically contingent sets of circumstances. Rules and precedents in organizations are not static empirically, but the theory indicates that people’s perceptions are caught in stasis. There is little sensitivity to organizational change or rule modification. Thus, a rhetoric is heard: ‘It’s the way things are done’, or ‘It’s how we have always done things’.

As with slippage, overreach compromises academic freedom. However, the two patterns operate differently in their effects. Slippage minimizes a profession’s defences by lack of oversight. In contrast, overreach compromises academic freedom as a direct assault on it. In Aristotelian terms, slippage and overreach are extremes, the first a deficiency, the second an excess. The mean benefits the group and larger societal order on which a profession’s viability is contingent. We may call the mean control: professionally grounded and guided self-regulation.