The administration is censoring.

FIRE reports.

Pima Community College Imposes Restrictive Media Policy on Faculty

In the era of social media and around-the-clock journalism, it’s no surprise that colleges and universities have become hypersensitive to their public image. FIRE has long been fighting administrative overreach and censorship perpetrated in the name of “branding.”

These image-conscious blunders take many forms, such as threatening student- or faculty-run websites and blogs that use their institution’s initials or name, overreacting to controversial social media posts, and disciplining public criticism of college policies or administrators. In a recent, galling case, Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine not only censored a faculty-produced bioethics journal due to a risque article that appeared in it, but also created a committee to review the content of future issues prior to publishing—a committee that tellingly includes the school’s marketing department.

Northwestern isn’t the first university to clumsily impose top-down censorship on its faculty. In 2012, Chicago State University (CSU) instituted a policy requiring that all communications and disclosures to the media be approved and coordinated through the university’s public relations division. After criticism from FIRE, the American Association of University Professors, and others, CSU quickly backed down and abandoned the policy. (Of course, CSU has made other attempts to censor faculty speech, for which the university currently finds itself in litigation coordinated by FIRE.)