An Open Letter from the AAUP to the Yale Community

This letter was written by a subcommittee and approved by the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom & Tenure.

We are writing to the Yale University community—its faculty, administrators, staff, students, and alumni—to express the AAUP’s growing concern about the character and impact of the university’s collaboration with the Singaporean government in establishing Yale-National University of Singapore College; we are concerned about the implications of the undertaking for academic freedom and the maintenance of educational standards at Yale and elsewhere.

The 2009 joint statement by the American Association of University Professors and the Canadian Association of University Teachers—“On the Conditions of Employment at Overseas Campuses”—was explicit in warning that “as the U.S. and Canadian presence in higher education grows in countries marked by authoritarian rule, basic principles of academic freedom, collegial governance, and nondiscrimination are less likely to be observed.  In a host environment where free speech is constrained, if not proscribed, faculty will censor themselves, and the cause of authentic liberal education, to the extent it can exist in such situations, will suffer.” As the statement continued, “the movement for international education can rest on laudable educational grounds. But those grounds will be jeopardized if hard-earned standards and protections are weakened rather than exported.”

The statement thus urged that college and university administrations provide faculty, students, and other key constituents with “detailed updates on all aspects of the project” as it proceeds and guarantee “provisions to ensure academic freedom and tenure and collegial governance,” including not only faculty assessment of programs, curriculum, and appointments, but also anti-harassment and anti-discrimination provisions and rights to procedural fairness. The statement drew further attention to working conditions for all campus employees: “The treatment of nonacademic employees involved in the construction, service, and maintenance of foreign campuses is another area of concern. Colleges and universities as employers and contractors should uphold the full observance of internationally recognized standards governing the rights and working conditions of nonacademic employees who build and maintain classrooms and offices and meet other needs that keep the institutions functioning. Universities operating internationally should adopt a code of conduct governing the workplace conditions and rights of all nonacademic employees, even and especially if these workers are employed directly by a local subcontractor.”

Yale’s planned Singapore campus highlights many of the concerns we expressed in the 2009 statement. Given the issues raised in numerous detailed critiques of the plan by faculty members and others, we believe that a healthy atmosphere for shared governance at Yale can only be restored if the Yale Corporation begins by releasing all documents and agreements related to the plan to establish the Yale-National University of Singapore campus. We recognize there may be no legal requirement to do so. Nonetheless, all members of the larger Yale community have a stake in Yale’s future and the impact the new campus will have on it. The faculty collectively has a special responsibility for the academic programs on the Singapore campus, the degree to which academic freedom and shared governance will be honored, and the character of all appointments. The larger Yale community also needs to know the nature of all financial arrangements for the project. While we believe this sort of transparency is always desirable, Yale-NUS presents a special challenge to Yale’s capacity to maintain the trust and dedicated commitment of its many constituents.

We believe Yale also needs to establish appropriate and genuinely open forums in which the academic and political implications of the new campus can be reviewed, discussed, and modified as necessary. Among the many issues that might be reviewed are these:

(a) what are the political implications of Yale’s decision to assist the Singapore government in achieving greater financial strength and cultural legitimacy through the establishment of the new campus?

(b) what risks to students and faculty are inherent in forms of campus speech, from Internet postings and email messages to broadcast lectures, that may be critical of the government, its laws, and its officials, including members of the Singapore judiciary?

(c) will all faculty, staff, and students of Yale-NUS (including Singaporean nationals) be guaranteed immunity from prosecution for defamation or sedition for writings or statements that would be protected under the provisions of the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel?

(d) will the other protections called for in the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel be implemented on the Singapore campus?

 (e) will all faculty, staff, and students of Yale-NUS (including Singaporean nationals), as well as the institution’s libraries, be exempt from all restrictions on importation of publications or periodicals?

 (f) will independent Internet access—not subject to Singapore’s firewalls or to its monitoring systems—be guaranteed  for all members of the Yale-NUS community?

 (g) can Yale-NUS community email be protected from government surveillance, even if email is sent unencrypted?

(h) will the right to invite speakers to campus be compromised by restrictions on visitors to Singapore?

(i) what risks to students, staff, and faculty with various sexual orientations are posed by Singapore’s laws?

(j) what may the impact on free speech on campus be of any surveillance protocols put in place by Singapore authorities?

(k) what policies could Yale put in place to ameliorate educational problems arising from the political self-censorship that pervades Singapore society?

(l) will Yale seek to address, even overcome, the separation between academic freedom in the classroom and limits to political speech both on and off-campus in Singapore?

(m) do employees at Yale-NUS who are not American citizens face working conditions that would be unacceptable in the United States?

(n) how will working conditions for non-American citizens be monitored and reported to members of the Yale community?

(o) will American faculty teaching at the Singapore campus be assured the protections for academic freedom and shared governance embodied in AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports that faculty have in New Haven?

(p) under what, if any, conditions violative of academic freedom or human rights would Yale consider it appropriate and necessary to withdraw from its Singaporean partnership?

In short, one needs to give serious consideration to whether academic freedom, and the personal freedoms that are a necessary prerequisite to its exercise, can in fact be sustained on a campus within what is a substantially authoritarian regime. This fundamental question is relevant whether one characterizes Yale-NUS as a satellite of the New Haven campus or as “the first new college to bear the Yale name in 300 years.” We do not claim that the list of issues above is complete, but it does identify some of the unusual concerns that are raised by plans to establish a Yale outpost in Singapore.

Some Yale administrators have argued that they have no choice but to obey the laws of another country, but if the laws are odious—such as criminalizing sexual orientation—the relevant choice is whether to collaborate with the country that espouses them. At stake are not simply “cultural differences” but whether Yale recognizes universal human rights and the protections for academic staff enunciated in the UNESCO Recommendation. Singapore is a modern, industrialized city whose leaders and citizens fully understand these values. How Yale addresses these issues has implications not only for the Yale community but also for higher education as a whole. The AAUP will remain willing to address any problems of academic freedom or shared governance that Yale faculty bring to our attention.

--Joan Bertin, Marjorie Heins, Cary Nelson, & Henry Reichman