Sessions & Speakers

AI and Higher Education
How is AI affecting higher education? Consider impacts on research and teaching, identify positive and negative aspects of AI tools, and discuss how shared governance voices are participating in institutional planning and policy-making related to AI.

Participatory Decision-Making: Fostering Collaboration & Consultation
In a rapidly changing higher education landscape, with frequent leadership changes, it is more important than ever to embrace decision-making practices that support institutional resilience. What are effective ways to orient, communicate with, and work with executive leaders? Hear and contribute successful strategies for collaborating on significant decisions about university priorities and operations.

Updates on Statement and Mutual Aid Defense Compact Resolutions (Current Issues)
Through this challenging year, our institutions – and our shared governance bodies – have partnered to manage uncertainty, articulate shared values, and provide strong, positive responses. This is an opportunity for updates, information sharing, and identification of agenda items for future conversations and conferences.

Building the Senate Agenda
How do you as senate leaders cultivate and bring forward items for consideration by your Senate? What processes does your university go through before an item comes to the Senate floor? Learn from colleagues strategies to bring actionable items to a vote.

Communicating about Senate Business
How can shared governance administrators and leaders communicate effectively to make shared governance contributions visible, foster engagement, encourage broader participation in decision-making, and build trust? Hear and contribute successful strategies for communicating senate business to constituents and other interested parties.

Influencing Academic Planning and Budgeting
As institutions of higher education have grown more complex, decisions are increasingly made centrally, sometimes with little or no input from shared governance. Decisions about academic planning and budgets reflect and shape institutional priorities. How are shared governance bodies maintaining influence and having a voice in these important areas? In this session, attendees will discuss scenarios/case studies in small groups and report out.

Good Governance begins with Good Records: The Importance of collecting and preserving shared governance records

Why is it important to manage and preserve shared governance documents? Presenters will discuss practical ways to manage shared governance records and help you consider their historical significance to preserve and share valuable stories of your institution.

Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating the Essential Tension Between Academic Freedom and Free Speech on Campus
The past two years have seen an unprecedented level of public attention to questions of academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. The Trump administration has accused universities of both failing to protect expressions of conservative views and failing to suppress antisemitic speech, and has used these complaints to justify punitive actions. What is missing in this public discussion is a clear understanding of the principles involved, both legal and philosophical. There are four main propositions that this talk will address:

• First, freedom of speech and academic freedom are opposing, not complementary, values: both are crucial on a college campus, but they operate differently and navigating the tension between them is the task of an institution’s administration and leadership.
• Second, academic freedom is very different in the teaching and research context; academic freedom of research belongs to the individual faculty member, but going all the way back to the original 1915 AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom it has been understood that academic freedom of teaching belongs to the institution.
• Third, universities are complex spaces that include multiple free speech settings (“forums”) with respect to which the legal rules differ; uniform rules across the campus do not make sense and are unworkable.

Both academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus are threatened today to a greater degree than at any time in recent history. To respond effectively to these threats requires administrators and faculty alike to understand and commit to both principles.