91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

Throughout this academic year, I have been in conversation with faculty, staff and students across CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó and with shared governance partners. Again and again, I’ve heard a shared concern about how we will advance our academic mission and stay true to our values at a time of declining public confidence in higher education and federal challenges to research and scholarship. For those who have not been able to attend my Provost’s Conversations, I’d like to address these questions directly in this issue and the next two Provost’s Posts. 

To start, my decisions and those of my academic leadership team are focused on advancing our four institutional priorities. Within that framework, these decisions are driven by a set of basic leadership values: protecting academic freedom and recognizing its associated responsibilities; encouraging excellence in our research, scholarship, creative work, teaching and service; ensuring that Academic Affairs is a constructive and accessible partner across all parts of campus; and finally, making difficult decisions based on facts and realities, not on unquestioned practices, conventional wisdom or fear. Here, I’d like to share my perspective on academic freedom.

I have built my career in research institutions—Michigan, where I earned my PhD, then UC Davis, then UT-Austin. I came to CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó because I was intrigued and inspired by an institution dedicated to the core mission of a public research university, but also well-prepared to face the challenging times facing higher education. My move from professor to leader and administrator began around 2010 when I realized the need for institutions to develop leaders who believed in and could advance that core mission of excellence in research, teaching that opens doors to social mobility, and service to communities, states and the world. This core mission cannot be achieved without academic freedom—the uncorrupted pursuit of truth as the scholar sees it and interpreted by the norms of each academic discipline, not by politics, donors or other outside influences. 

My predecessor, Provost Russell Moore, began an affirmation of this fact when he partnered with the Office of Faculty Affairs in 2019 and engaged in a multi-year effort to define and explore the dimensions of academic freedom, including extensive support for faculty who experience threats to that academic freedom. In less than a year here at CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó, I’ve seen an ironclad commitment to academic freedom expressed from members of the Board of Regents, President Todd Saliman and Chancellor Justin Schwartz. 

At the center of my values is empowering scholars to pursue difficult and contested questions in the search for truth, guided by the ethical standards and scholarly rigor of their disciplines. My confidence in defending that work comes from a career‑long understanding that academic freedom and accountability go hand in hand. What is often less visible is the level of scrutiny academic work routinely faces. Faculty earn publication, funding and tenure through rigorous peer review, a process that can be challenging and, at its best, transformative. There is no path to academic success without sustained critical engagement from disciplinary peers. The peer review process is far from perfect but continued active engagement by our faculty in that process can not only push us toward excellence, it can contribute to improving the process itself. Students also play a vital role, bringing questions and perspectives that sharpen inquiry, strengthen teaching and guard against unsupported claims.

As we see threats to academic freedom, and sometimes even direct censorship, it is critical to remember that academic freedom, and academia, is about ideas. Ideas have an essential quality of lacking clear borders; they blend and blur into new ideas, and one idea connects to countless others. This means that threats to academic freedom are hard to contain. If we aren’t allowed to consider, research and teach certain controversial ideas, it’s impossible to know what potential chain of ideas and discovery we are breaking. The alternative is to uphold academic freedom by allowing ideas to be shared, tested and refined within guardrails rooted in faculty expertise, rigorous peer review, and further tested by student input and exchange in the classroom. 

Building on what my predecessor established, I will continue to explore the dimensions of academic freedom in partnership with our faculty, our deans and via the truest method within our mission: seeking, defining, challenging and redefining. Academic freedom will always be the north star of my scholarly values, the ethical center of my leadership, and the grounding for all research, scholarship, creative work, teaching and service at the 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó.