The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs issued a statement Monday declaring that although student merit should be the primary concern in providing letters of recommendation, the decision to write letters must remain in the hands of faculty members.
SACUA Chair Neil Marsh said the executive arm of the central faculty governance system believes that faculty members have the right to reject writing letters of recommendation that go against their personal backgrounds or beliefs.
more information
SACUA’s statement, which was approved by members via email, comes in the wake of a recent incident where a U-M faculty member refused to provide a previously promised letter of recommendation for a student because she sought to study in Israel.
In the statement, SACUA reasserted its commitment to the American Association of University Professors’ Statement of Professional Ethics, which stresses that a student’s merit should be the primary concern in providing letters of recommendation, and that faculty members “have a particular obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public understanding of academic freedom.”
However, in the statement, SACUA expressed its concern that a disciplinary letter recently issued to the faculty member by LSA Interim Dean Elizabeth R. Cole “may have a chilling effect on members of the academic community who may, for legitimate and deeply held personal reasons, feel uncomfortable about providing letters to certain organizations or individuals.”
“Such discomfort is fully in accord with the principle of intellectual integrity that is the core of academic freedom and does not represent ‘exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students,’ which is deprecated by the AAUP,” the statement reads.
“SACUA asserts that recommendation letters represent the personal endorsement of the writer and, as such, the decision to write any letter must remain the prerogative of the author; faculty members should not have to fear reprisal for declining to write a letter,” the statement continues.
“To the extent that any member of our academic community feels coerced into providing a recommendation letter, or stating opinions that he or she does not believe, the integrity of the recommendation is tarnished and the academic freedom that is central to our university is impugned.”
SACUA’s statement expands on an original statement the committee approved in September, which affirmed its commitment to the AAUP guidelines and was cited in Cole’s disciplinary letter to the professor in question.
“We got a lot of comments from various faculty members who expressed concern that our statement was being used to justify disciplinary action, which is not what we intended it to be. We didn’t know there would be disciplinary action. We just simply put it out,” Marsh said.
“The other thing that we heard from faculty members was that they were concerned that if they for whatever reason declined to write a letter, then they might face some kind of discipline.
“We wanted to produce a statement that both affirmed our original statement and made it clear that we think that there are valid reasons where faculty members may not wish to write letters and that ultimately the choice as to somebody writes a letter or not has to be theirs.”
Adam Simon
This is such a shame. Read the words in the SACUA statement and see the faculty hide behind their hypocrisy. I write letters of recommendation all the time for students and the letters are my assessment of the abilities of the STUDENT. My letters have zero to do with my opinion of where the student plans to study. I am endorsing the STUDENT, not where they propose to study. I invite the faculty member to come talk with me about how he is connected to Israel in so many ways that he cannot even imagine. His hypocrisy and SACUA’s approval of his hypocrisy are the antithesis of our role as educators. This faculty member was not asked about his opinion of Israel. He was asked to assess the student’s ability to perform well in a study abroad program. If he is opposed to Israel, I’m not sure where he can write letters. Certainly not the United States where we continue to oppress indigenous communities.
Syagnik Banerjee
If the faculty member’s discomfort is based on “deeply held personal reasons”, how did SACUA determine that it does not represent personal bias and discriminatory treatment of students? A clear articulation of this process of determination would validate the above claim.