PETITION OF:

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In the Year Two Thousand and Seven.

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Resolve providing for the academic bill of rights.

Resolved,

Resolved,

The General Court hereby finds the following:

(1) The principles enumerated in this section fully apply only to public universities that present themselves as bound by the canons of academic freedom contained within. Nothing in this section shall be construed as interfering with the right of a private institution to restrict academic freedom on the basis of creed or belief; and
(2) the central purposes of a university are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large; and
(3) free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the achievement of these goals, the freedoms to teach and to learn depend upon the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture halls, and these purposes reflect the values, pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness, and fairness, that are the cornerstones of American society; and
(4) academic freedom consists in protecting the intellectual independence of professors, researchers, and students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of ideas without interference of legislators or authorities within the institution itself, meaning that no political or ideological orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring, tenure, or termination process, nor through any other administrative means by the academic institution, nor should the legislature impose any such orthodoxy through the unreasonable control of the university budget; and
(5) the education of the next generation of leaders of American should contain rigorous and balanced exposure to significant theories and thoughtful viewpoints, and students should be given the knowledge and background that empowers them to think for themselves.
(6) The board of higher education shall, in cooperation with institutions of public higher education, establish an academic bill of rights. Such bill of rights shall secure the intellectual independence of faculty and students and protect the principles of academic freedom by requiring that the following principles and procedures be observed at all public colleges and universities within the commonwealth:

a). All faculty members shall be hired, fired, promoted, or granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise. No faculty member shall be hired, fired, or denied promotion or tenure solely on the basis of his or her political or ideological beliefs;

b). No faculty member shall be excluded from a tenure search or hiring committee on the basis of his or her political or ideological beliefs;

c). Students shall not be graded on the basis of their political or ideological beliefs. Each college and university should have well known and publicly accessible policies and procedures available to students who believe they have been penalized for their social, political, or ideological beliefs;

d). While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their viewpoints, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints;

e). Faculty members should not use their courses for the purpose of political or ideological indoctrination of students;

f). An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature, or other efforts to obstruct this exchange shall not be tolerated; and

g). Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation.