Thread by @TheFIREorg

1/ In 2020 the University of Tennessee, Knoxville announced it was creating “diversity action plans” as part of “a sustained push to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The plans contained various objectives that threaten free speech and academic freedom. 👇

2/ Objectives included requirements that current or prospective faculty submit statements demonstrating commitment to #DEI, mandatory syllabus statements affirming DEI, DEI-based course assessments, and bias reporting systems.

3/ FIRE wrote UT Knoxville in September calling on it to eliminate the plans’ speech-restrictive components, or to at least ensure they are implemented in a manner that respects students’ and faculty members’ expressive rights.

thefire.org/news/diversity…

4/ UT Knoxville responded that these plans are no longer in place, and the university is working off of new plans. FIRE reviewed the new plans, which do not raise the same concerns about free speech or academic freedom.

That’s great news. 🙌

5/ But we wanted to know whether UT Knoxville implemented any of the troubling proposals in the old plans before it began to work off of the new ones.

Unfortunately, the university has not been forthcoming with that information despite our repeated inquiries.

6/ Rather than continue to pull teeth via email, FIRE filed a public records request with UT Knoxville to find out whether it implemented any of the original diversity action plan components to which we objected in our September letter.

7/ We hope the answer is NO, but the university’s reluctance to give us this information does not make us optimistic.

Read more here:
thefire.org/news/universit…

8/ As FIRE has said many times, we have no position on DEI generally, but we object to any policies that restrict employment or advancement for faculty who dissent from their institution’s views on 𝒂𝒏𝒚 political or ideological issue.