Inside Higher Ed Highlights AIM Activism That Triggered Formal Policy on Recording at UNC

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently rolled out a new policy that permits university officials to record classes without notifying the instructor. It’s a practice administrators have used in the past to investigate professors but have now formalized in writing.

According to the policy, administrators may, with the provost and general counsel’s written permission, record classes or access existing recordings without telling faculty in order to “gather evidence in connection with an investigation into alleged violations of university policy” and “for any other lawful purpose, when authorized in writing by the provost and the office of university counsel, who will consult with the chair of the faculty.”

Mehdi Shadmehr, an associate professor of public policy at UNC, told Inside Higher Ed the policy is “completely outside any kind of norm.”

“This is something that governments in Iran and Syria and East Germany and maybe military regimes back in the day in Argentina and Brazil would do, but in the United States? That’s just crazy,” he said.

Students are prohibited from recording in class without explicit permission from the instructor—a practice that has landed professors at other universities in political hot water in recent months. UNC students may seek an exemption to record through the accessibility resources office if needed, the policy states. Faculty members may record their own classes for “instructional purposes” but must notify students prior to recording. To record classes as part of tenure and promotion evaluation, the university must notify instructors of the forthcoming recording at least seven calendar days in advance and work with the instructor to find a class date that is “representative of the overall course.”

Read the full article here.

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