The University of Utah took down an “Anti-Racist Code of Conduct” web site put up by its Communication Department, in response to a civil-liberties group threatening to sue it.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) had sent the University a demand letter, triggering the removal of the webpage.
“FIRE will continue to monitor the situation to ensure any policy respects students’ and faculty members’ expressive rights,” said FIRE’s Haley Gluhanich.
The Code, which was implemented in 2020, said, “We work intentionally to eradicate speech or actions that stereotype, inferentially identify, culturally discriminate against, or harm people of color. We disrupt and dismantle racist learning and work environments created through White normativity and discriminatory actions such as microaggressions, microassaults, and microinsults.”
The code also “impos[es] an affirmative obligation on all Departmental members to engage in anti-racist actions and support anti-racist Department institutions and norms,” according to its text.
In it, the Communication Department pledged to “interrupt and/or intervene in racist incidents in all university spaces that are utilized and inhabited by Department members, including physical spaces (offices, classrooms, bathrooms, conference rooms, lunch rooms) and online forums.”
FIRE raised concerns about the code of conduct in a March 23 letter, saying the code of conduct “impermissibly compels faculty to voice and commit to prescribed views on contested questions of politics and morality, implicating faculty members’ most essential freedoms of expression and conscience. The ARCC also exceeds the department’s authority in matters of academic freedom and threatens to cast a pall of orthodoxy over the academic environment.”
FIRE said that under the First Amendment, the University “cannot compel speech by telling faculty they must ‘intervene’ in situations administrators subjectively deem ‘racist’ or otherwise inappropriate, nor may it force faculty to express acceptance or promote ideas about race they may not hold. The university also cannot ban ‘microaggressions, microassaults, or microinsults,’ unless such speech rises to the level of discriminatory harassment or a true threat unprotected by the First Amendment.”
While the University is allowed to “shape and express its own aspirational values” and “encourage faculty and faculty applicants to adopt statements that reflect such values or act in a certain way” it is not allowed to “cross the line into implicit coercion. What the department cannot do, however, is compel faculty and faculty applicants to express fealty to a specific ideological viewpoint,” FIRE said.
