Faculty Flexibility Policy Statement

The challenges of responding to the dynamic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic are immense, and we commend the University’s COVID Coordination Group and the UFS Summer Leadership Committee for its work in ensuring a safe return to campus. As educators, we feel strongly that teaching and learning work best when conducted in-person. At the same time, we recognize the anxiety and risk caused by the highly transmissible character of the Delta variant, as well as the deteriorating efficacy of vaccines over time and high transmission probabilities in classroom settings. These concerns are shared especially among faculty who are immunocompromised or unable to be vaccinated, or who live with individuals that are immunocompromised or otherwise unvaccinated (e.g., children under the age of 12).

Part-time faculty are particularly vulnerable to insecure employment under the current conditions of the COVID crisis. It has come to our attention that several part-time faculty at The New School have requested to teach their courses online out of serious concern for safety, exacerbated by Covid-related risk factors, and that their requests were denied by department leadership. Further, an unprecedented number of part-time faculty have requested unpaid leave due to safety concerns.

Given these concerns and the University’s social justice mission, we affirm the right of all faculty to use their discretion in deciding how best to conduct their classes, whether in-person, online, or a combination of the two. We ask that the administration fully support faculty flexibility in assessing and responding to the health risks posed by their classroom configurations and without fear of retribution or job loss. We call upon the University Faculty Senate to work with University leadership to draft a University-wide policy that extends flexibility to all faculty. Such a policy should adhere to the national AAUP organization in their “Statement on Covid-19 and the Faculty Role in Decision-Making” and “Principles of Academic Governance during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” which asserts that “faculty has ‘primary responsibility’ for decisions related to academic matters, including ‘curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.’”