Dear Colleagues,

 As we prepare to begin the new academic year, we find ourselves navigating national and international issues that have a profound and personal impact on many members of our university community.

Free speech and academic freedom are cornerstone values of UC Riverside and the University of California system. Under the First Amendment and principles of academic freedom, faculty members, individually and collectively, have the right to express their views. 

At the same time, it is important to remember that as faculty within a public university system, we have an obligation to ensure that our personal views are not mistaken for the views of the university and that they do not misrepresent the views of other individuals within our community.

With that in mind, I write to direct your attention to a systemwide policy recently approved by the Regents regarding public and discretionary statements by Academic Campus Units. Regents Policy 4408: Policy on Public and Discretionary Statements. The policy followed discussions between the Regents and the systemwide Academic Senate during the 2023-24 academic year, as well as recommendations distributed in 2022 by the UC Academic Council Chair from the University Committee on Academic Freedom.

The new policy distinguishes between “Public Statements” as “messages sent to University constituencies or the public regarding its curricular offerings, its traditional mission statements, or strategic plans; administrative activities, operations or resources; news announcing University or campus activities, programs or initiatives; or news and events related to faculty research, teaching, and individual or collective scholarly endeavors;” and “Discretionary Statements” as messages “that are not part of the day-to-day, term-to-term operations of the unit, and that comment on institutional, local, regional, global or national events, activities or issues.”  

The policy requires: 

•    That all Public Statements (including Discretionary Statements) be consistent with applicable law and University policy;

•    That Discretionary Statements be accompanied by a disclaimer expressly stating that the statement should not be taken as a position of the University, or the campus, as a whole;

•    That Academic Campus Units that intend to produce and disseminate Discretionary Statements develop and publish procedures that comply with the rules outlined below; and

•    That Discretionary Statements should not appear on the main homepage of a website of an academic Unit, and instead should be posted on a separate page identified for such statements.

The Policy applies only to Academic Campus Units and does not address statements made by individual university community members or groups of university community members. The policy states: “The University affirms the rights of individual university members, and of groups of University members, to author and publish statements and circulate them in their own private networks or on an individual University community member’s page on a unit’s website.” 

Please review the policy and visit our website for a related Q&A. Colleges and departments should confer to determine if they wish to allow discretionary statements, and if so, establish protocols consistent with Regents Policy 4408. 

Thank you for your work to ensure our core values of freedom of speech and inquiry are upheld within a broader university community that is respectful and inclusive.