After approving a plan last year, the Idaho State Board of Education voted Thursday to implement it into policy, making some student fees optional across Idaho’s four-year public institutions.
Students will be given the option to opt-out of fees relating to student government, student activities and student organizations. Students who choose to opt-out of these fees will be able to receive a refund beginning in Fall 2022.
The State Board voted to revise its policy on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, bringing the policy, which had gone unchanged since the 1980s, more in line with current national standards.
“If you look at what’s happening nationally on many college and university campuses, freedom of speech has been infringed upon,” ISBE President Kurt Liebich said. “There have been times where speakers haven’t been welcomed on campus with different views. Those national issues have raised concerns in various parts of our state including our legislature…(regarding) whether or not students on our campuses had the right to freely speak and debate ideas.”
Liebich added that the debate surrounding these national standards served as the inspiration for “freshening up” the long-standing state policy on Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility.
The revision brings a significant change to the earlier definition of academic freedom that was far narrower in scope. Under the previous version of the policy, academic freedom was defined as being “essential to protect the right of the faculty member in teaching and the student in learning.”
The newest revision brings a broader definition, calling academic freedom a “long-standing philosophical, legal and constitutional principle of freedom of speech that advances the right of postsecondary students, faculty and institutions to pursue educational opportunities … without fear of censorship, retaliation, or threat to institutional status.”
Prior to the revision, the Faculty Senates of Boise State University, Idaho State University, University of Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College sent a joint letter to the board, offering their support of the revisions and the effort to preserve “intellectual freedom in higher education.”
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @roycemccandless