The Steering Committee of the General Faculty — a College administrative group that manages general faculty meetings and agendas — will release a recommendatory report with “more concrete guidance” for statements written by centers, departments, institutes and programs at the beginning of the winter term, according to Provost David Kotz. Kotz tasked the committee with reviewing the procedures of department statements over the summer, he added.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Kotz wrote that he hopes the report will allow the “community” to “absorb” the contents and have “conversations” about the report before any policy is changed.
“The report recommends new language for updates to the policy, but is not itself a draft of the policy,” Kotz wrote.
The current College policy on institutional statements, established in 2022, states that no department has the “authority” to issue official institutional statements on behalf of Dartmouth.
History department chair Darron McMahon, who was “briefed” on the report, said it intends to address the College’s “concern” about the statement process — including concerns about achieving full departmental consent.
“[The College is] concerned about instances — and this has happened in the past — where statements have been released, say by the chair [of the department], without the full consent of the department, and that’s problematic,” McMahon said. “They’re also worried about the process. What does it mean to issue a statement in the name of the department? Has there been a vote? Is there allowance for dissent?”
The new guidelines give “clarity” to the process of issuing department and program statements while “upholding faculty’s right to free speech,” McMahon said.
He added that individuals who also have been briefed on the guidelines have been “pleased with its contents.” According to Kotz, “many faculty” have been briefed on the “general recommendations” of the report, while College President and Committee chair Sian Leah Beilock “presented an update to the whole faculty” at the Oct. 10 General Faculty meeting.
Departments issue statements on a variety of topics, from global events to campus ones. The history department, for example, recently issued a statement on Oct. 24 condemning the barring of Birzeit University professor Basil Farraj by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency from entering the United States. Farraj was invited to speak at an event titled the “Carceral Histories of the Global Middle East,” hosted by history professor Golnar Nikpour on Sept. 24. The event continued as scheduled with Farraj joining via Zoom, according to Nikpour.
Farraj was traveling to the United States from Colombia — where he was conducting research on Latin American prisons — with a valid visa when he was detained, according to Nikpour.
“Although Dr. Farraj was traveling on a valid visa and presented proof that he had been invited to speak at Dartmouth, customs agents detained him, seized his phone, revoked his visa and disallowed him from entering the country,” the history department wrote in its statement.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol — which is not required to give a reason for disallowed entry — did not provide one to Farraj, Nikpour said.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
Nikpour said she sent an email to members of the history department to inform them of what had happened and received an “outpouring of support” from colleagues.
According to McMahon, the department was “deeply troubled” by the incident. McMahon added that he recalls only two statements released by the department in his 10 years at the College — one about the “mistreatment” of Farraj and another condemning the arrests of 89 individuals at the May 1 pro-Palestinian protest on the Green this past spring.
“[Farraj] was a case where this directly affected the department,” McMahon said. “It cost us, in fact, thousands of dollars having to pay for his travel back.”
McMahon added that because Farraj was an invited guest participating in a session sponsored by the history department, the situation “related directly” to both the department and issues of “academic freedom.”
The history department spent “quite a lot of time” writing the statement, McMahon said. History faculty members edited it “several times” to incorporate faculty feedback before “unanimously” deciding to publish the statement in a “blind vote,” Nikpour added.
Jewish studies program chair Susannah Heschel said her program has not discussed the process of issuing a departmental statement before. In her approximately 25 years as department chair, Heschel added that she did not recall releasing any statements on behalf of the department. That said, the program has published statements on behalf of individual professors. A statement from former professor Shaul Magid titled “The Jewish Studies Program is horrified by the attack on Israel by Hamas” is currently posted on the program’s webpage.
“I’m perfectly comfortable with the College issuing a statement when it thinks it’s appropriate,” Heschel said.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, history professor Annelise Orleck wrote that the women’s, gender and sexuality studies program has a process for releasing statements, which includes multiple rounds of writing, polling of faculty and editing. A “unanimous” vote among faculty members is then required before publication, Orleck wrote.
The WGSS program has published two statements this year — one condemning the May 1 arrests and another in defense of Japanese literature and culture professor Sachi Schmidt-Hor, who received racist, misogynist and homophobic “attacks,” according to the department’s website. The attacks followed Schmidt-Hor’s narrative consultation work on the video game “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows,” which some criticized for its inclusion of a Black protagonist, according to the Asian societies, cultures and languages department.
While Orleck wrote that she had heard “talk of banning” departmental statements in the future — which she wrote “would represent a dangerous restriction of free speech” — Kotz wrote in a follow-up statement that the College has “no plans” to ban departmental statements “altogether.”
McMahon said he believes that “less is more” in terms of departmental statements because it is not “[the department’s] place” to respond to “every global injustice.” Nikpour added that statements should relate to the focus of the department.
“In the broader history of the [history] department, it’s not that we’re constantly rushing to make statements,” Nikpour said. “… Both of the statements that I’ve been privy to were the result of feeling that academic freedom in some way had been infringed on [and] that our ability to do work as scholars was being infringed on.”
