Shared Governance
Professors Are Uniquely Powerful. That May Be Changing. Faculty members are used to sharing power with presidents and trustees to run universities. But some presidents and lawmakers have made moves to reduce their say. In September, faculty members held a silent vigil in defense of academic freedom and shared governance at the Emory University campus in Atlanta. Credit... Nicole Craine for The New York Times By Alan Blinder Reporting from Atlanta Nov. 2, 2024 Updated 6:31 a.m. ET Ilya Nemenman, an Emory University physics professor, seethed as summer break neared its end. After a pro-Palestinian demonstration in April had ended with police officers firing chemical irritants , Emory’s president had decided to update the campus’s protest policy. The revisions were not necessarily what angered Dr. Nemenman. The problem was that the president had not received the University Senate’s feedback first. “This is not just a corporation,” Dr. Nemenman chided the president, Gregory L. Fenves,