AU Perspective: Mute Button University

Federal agents recently arrested three activists after disrupting a Minnesota church service, charged with conspiracy to interfere with other people's constitutional right to worship. Headlines from this case (re)affirm a long-standing principle upheld by the US Supreme Court; our First Amendment civil right protects one’s right to speak, not the right to prevent others from speaking.

That principle was designed to be uniformly applied across all levels of government and public institutions. Once again, Auburn University's actions appear less like ‘obedience to law’ as prescribed in the Auburn Creed and more like capricious application of institutional preference.

AU is navigating Alabama Act 2024-34, which restricts how public universities may teach "divisive concepts." Auburn's guidance stresses such material can be taught "objectively and without endorsement." But policy is revealed preference, not stated preference. Auburn's revealed preference is to treat faculty speech as a liability to be contained.

Start with AU’s incentive structure compelling faculty to sign forms affirming their course content and materials complies with State and federal law. This vulgar act triggered a rare petition demanding a special University Faculty meeting. The petition noted this "certification" carried implicit threats of discipline, creating what the petition described an urgent need to discuss "consequences of inaction or refusal to certify."

Coercive administrators do not have to fire anyone to alter behavior; simply make threat(s) of potential penalty sufficiently salient. When expected cost of teaching a sensitive topic rises; faculty adjust their behavior in predictable ways. Course content quietly changes, so no termination action is required.

Faculty, indeed, even the notoriously docile AU faculty, noticed and they petitioned! They pressed for a Special Called Meeting of the University Faculty on November 12, 2025. The published agenda promised "General Discussion Among Faculty."

What faculty observed was a mostly scripted press conference and administrative infomercial. Despite the promise of actual discussion, administrators answered pre-screened, pre-written questions as faculty were muted. A "general discussion" where faculty cannot speak is not a discussion. If administrators must mute the faculty to maintain order, they’re not maintaining order by exercising prior restraint within a Zoom setting.

To cement their civil rights violation, administrators suppressed the record of the “meeting.” Auburn's Senate routinely posts recordings of its meetings, yet the November 12th recording was not posted online.

On December 9, Professor Alan Seals emailed AU’s Senate Secretary asking when the recording would be posted. The response: "We are not posting a copy of the recording." Professor Seals was offered a curated document of written answers instead. Written answers are edited. Recordings are evidence. The distinction is worthy of note.

Professor Seals comment w.r.t. suppressing the record was, "a further attempt to restrict speech" and submitted a formal request under the Alabama Open Records Act. One week later, the University Senate Chair and Secretary [Professors Virginia Davis and Rachel Prado, respectively] reversed course and sent a link. The recording had existed all along as they apparently hoped no one would insist on obtaining it.

This is not how confident, decent institutions behave. Confident institutions default to transparency trusting their actions will survive scrutiny. Institutions which suppress recordings until legally compelled to release them are signaling something else entirely.

AU cannot disclaim responsibility deflecting to Montgomery. The legislature passed SB 129, but Auburn chooses how to interpret it. Auburn chooses whether faculty meetings permit faculty speech. Auburn chooses whether recordings are public by default or extracted through legal actions. These are administrative choices revealing what the institution actually values.

The First Amendment binds AU as a State actor receiving federal dollars. The doctrine is settled: public universities cannot condition employment on the surrender of constitutional rights. Pickering v. Board of Education established public employees retain free speech protections, subject to balancing tests that weigh the employee's interest as a citizen against the State's interest as employer. Any certification requirement that chills protected classroom speech, combined with meetings which silence faculty and disappearing/reappearing recordings, doesn’t look like good-faith balancing. It smacks of bureaucratic irredentism against faculty governance.

The remedy is not complicated. Hold genuine meetings with live questions and open microphones then post and archive recordings promptly as a matter of routine. Stop using coercive language like "certify" when AU's own guidance acknowledges pedagogical balance requirements. Recognize and cherish, in the Spirit of the Auburn Creed, transparency is not a concession to be extracted by records requests. Transparency is a fundamental expectation for a public institution.

Faculty aren’t public-relation risks to be managed; they’re a productive asset in the institution’s mix to deploy wisely. As some readers may recall, I consider Jay Gogue Auburn’s finest modern President, who would often remark that a university is its faculty. Of course, AU has suffered some poor, malicious faculty and even more so administrators. Sadly, those finally disciplined in the courts are rewarded with higher pay and more largess instead of publicly removed as an example of AU not tolerating coercive results - e.g., a Dean asserting a faculty member is a witch to burn/fire.

Minnesota's church case illustrates one does not have any sort of right to silence other people's lawful speech. AU must internalize this lesson or continue to place the university in jeopardy. A university mashing the mute button first is not defending academic freedom. It is systematically practicing how to oppress it.

Postscript: forgive not following through on intended issues. It appears the pessimistic pall of fear enveloping the Plains impedes getting positive as well as negative input for AU Perspective submissions.

John Sophocleus is a retired Auburn instructor, the 2002 Libertarian nominee for Governor or Alabama, 2024 Libertarian nominee for U.S. Senate, and a widely published political commentator.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Alabama Gazette staff or publishers.