The statement below is derived from the University of California’s Faculty Code of Conduct.
The University of California seeks to provide and sustain an environment conducive to sharing, extending, and critically examining knowledge and values, and to furthering the search for wisdom. Effective performance of these central functions requires that faculty members be free within their respective fields of competence to pursue and teach the truth in accord with appropriate standards of scholarly inquiry.
The faculty’s privileges and protections, including that of tenure, rest on the mutually supportive relationships between the faculty’s special professional competence, its academic freedom, and the central functions of the University. These relationships are also the source of the professional responsibilities of faculty members.
The Faculty Code of Conduct aims to protect academic freedom, to help preserve the highest standards of teaching and scholarship, and to advance the mission of the University as an institution of higher learning. The Code sets forth the responsibility of the University to maintain conditions and rights supportive of the faculty’s pursuit of the University’s central functions.
The Code also elaborates standards of professional conduct. Conduct that departs from the precepts from which these standards are derived is viewed as unacceptable because it is inconsistent with the mission of the University. The articulation of types of unacceptable faculty conduct is appropriate both to verify that a consensus about minimally acceptable standards in fact does exist and to give fair notice to all that departures from these minimal standards may give rise to disciplinary proceedings.
Resources on SVSH Investigation and Adjudication Procedures:
- Senate and Non-senate Faculty Investigation and Adjudication Procedures
- Campus Peer Review Committee for Faculty SVSH cases
Guidelines for Bullying Prevention and Response: