Participating in Focus Groups on Title VI Compliance and Academic Freedom

Dear Drexel Students and Colleagues,

We are inviting you to join us in our ongoing efforts to make Drexel an ever more inclusive and equitable University by participating in a focus group as part of the ongoing examination of our policies and practices relating to Title VI, free expression, and academic freedom.

As you may recall, Drexel launched an external review this past spring of our University’s institutional responses to reports of discrimination and harassment under Title VI – the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin (including shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics) – and their intersection with principles of free speech and academic freedom.

Since that time, our External Review senior operations team, led by Cozen O’Connor’s Institutional Response Group and headed by Attorneys Gina Maisto Smith and Leslie Gomez, has enlisted the expertise and perspectives of University trustees, faculty, students and professional staff who are serving on its Advisory Committee and Community Engagement Group to inform our work to update our policies and practices consistent with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Their feedback played an especially key role in our work to develop preliminary new guidelines to govern demonstrations, rallies, marches, exhibits, or other activism events. Moreover, we will continue to seek their feedback and advice as we work to establish frameworks that protect academic freedom and free speech consistent with our obligations under Title VI.

At the same time, we know that we have more work to do to ensure that we have equitable systems and policies in place to support compliance with Title VI. To honor that commitment, members of the External Review’s Senior Leadership Operations Group and I invite you to participate in a focus group and provide your views – based on observations and/or personal experience – of Drexel’s current policies and procedures around Title VI compliance, free expression, and academic freedom.

In seeking your candid views, we recognize that some of you may not feel comfortable speaking freely in the presence of senior administrators or supervisors. That is why we have arranged for Healy+, an outside firm that specializes in organizational assessments for higher education, to facilitate sessions with 15 focus groups over the next month, with no supervisors, senior administrators or members of the senior operations team present. Healy+ will then analyze the feedback of all participants, whose anonymity will be protected, to inform the comprehensive final report, which will include key findings and actionable recommendations for improvement.

If you are interested in participating in a focus group, as we hope you are, please click on this link to register. If you are unable to make a session, you still have an opportunity to provide feedback by completing this short survey administered by Healy+.

In my Convocation remarks, I referred to Drexel’s “self-correcting, self-improving and resilient nature.” By taking part in this important process, you will play a vital role in helping Drexel to keep self-correcting and improving.

Sincerely,

Denis P. O’Brien
Interim President