Committee on Academic Freedom & Campus Expression
The Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (CAFCE) is charged to bring together students, staff, and faculty to develop a Campus Expression Roadmap for the Institute. CAFCE was originally focused on developing that roadmap by building on the ten recommendations made by the Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression that developed MIT's free speech policy, the Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom.
CAFCE is composed of members from the faculty, the administration, and undergraduate and graduate students.
The MIT Free Speech Alliance is committed to working with CAFCE towards restoring MIT's culture of open discourse, academic freedom and tolerance of diverse viewpoints. MFSA presented its Recommendations of specific, concrete steps to accomplish that goal to CAFCE.
More information on CAFCE can be found on the CAFCE website.
History of CAFCE
President Sally Kornbluth wrote a letter to the MIT community on February 17, 2023, endorsing the Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom as MIT policy throughout the Institute. In that letter she charged the MIT Provost, Chancellor and Faculty Chair to charge "a team, with broad community representation, to review and reflect on the recommendations in the working group’s report and provide a roadmap of best next steps."
Nine months later, in a letter to the MIT community on October 18, 2023, President Kornbluth announced a new Subcommittee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (SAFCE) " to develop a campus expression roadmap that will propose practical steps to advance the recommendations of the report of the MIT Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression (FEWG)." This letter was issued 11 days after the Hamas attack on Israel and the day before President Kornbluth appeared as the guest speaker at a MFSA All Hands meeting. This group was originally structured as a subcommittee of the MIT Faculty Policy Committee (FPC) and reported to the Chair of the Faculty. The original charge for SAFCE is no longer available on the MIT website.
President Kornbluth sent another letter to the MIT community on January 3, 2024, announcing "new steps for a new year" while MIT was embroiled in disruptive demonstrations over the Gaza conflict. Among other announcements in this letter, President Kornbluth upgraded the original SAFCE to be a full Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (CAFCE) that would absorb the original subcommittee's mission, and added the charge to focus "immediately on examining these [freedom of expression] policy areas to ensure that we all understand the rules and our responsibilities as members of the MIT community." The CAFCE co-chairs, Professors Mike Sipser and Peko Hosoi, remained the same, but CAFCE now reports to both President Kornbluth and the Faculty Policy Committee.