Questions raised by UNC's accreditation body — the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges — letter were at the top of the Faculty Executive Committee agenda Monday.
Faculty chairman Bruce Cairns said the University has an obligation to respond to every question outlined in the letter, which questioned UNC's integrity, curriculum and student-athlete admissions process, among other things.
“I think that those are all reasonable questions,” he said. “They’re difficult, and they’re challenging, but this entire situation is. We have a responsibility to be accredited and a responsibility to stand for and support all the outlines in the letter.”
Part of the letter asks the University to define and provide policies and practices related to academic freedom. The University must demonstrate how the current policies excuse the faculty from accountability for academic integrity and how it creates barriers to report academic irregularities.
Cairns said the questions related to academic integrity were meant in a positive way.
“Academic freedom is one of the elements that makes a University unique,” Cairns said. “It’s an enormous privilege to have academic freedom, but what comes with that is responsibility and integrity. If you don’t adhere to those principles, then you put academic freedom at risk.”
As a response to the academic integrity policies, Cairns said there is no element that excuses faculty from accountability, but they have built in a number of reforms including departmental reviews.
English professor and committee member Susan Irons reiterated that there is not a problem with the University's definition of academic freedom.
“(The letter) is not our definition of academic freedom,” she said. “That’s not where the barriers or problems are.”
