Grant A. Mincy, writing in Academic Blog: “The AAUP has long held that shared governance is not procedural overhead but the institutional mechanism through which academic quality is produced and sustained. The Yale University Committee on Institutional Integrity made the same point more recently: Governance structures that insulate academic decisions from political capture are preconditions for trustworthy educational outcomes, not alternatives to them. The draft principles also replace protections for academic freedom with policies on “free inquiry and intellectual autonomy.” This substitution is not an equivalent restatement. Academic freedom is a term of art with a specific, well-developed meaning in American higher education law and policy. It encompasses not only protected expression in the classroom and laboratory but the freedom to speak as citizens on institutional and public matters—to criticize administrative decisions, to advocate on matters of governance, and to participate in faculty senate proceedings. These are precisely the forms of expression that have come under legislative pressure across the nation, and they are the forms that shared governance depends upon. Replacing “academic freedom” with “free inquiry” removes the doctrinal foundation for protecting them—a foundation with deep roots in constitutional jurisprudence.” Read more here.