As stated in the Agreement Concerning Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Responsibility of Faculty Members: “The Trustees and Faculty of Dartmouth College agree that the principle of academic freedom is fundamental to the life and work of the institution and of all who serve it in the responsible performance of teaching and scholarly pursuits.”
Due to the ubiquity of technology in the classroom and in light of recent concerns relating to censorship on the part of various communications platforms, Dartmouth Information, Technology and Consulting reaffirms its commitment to support academic freedom in educational programming at Dartmouth College.
Video Collaboration Solution Selection and Support
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of technology in the classroom and in connection with academic events. In light of the role that video conferencing and webinar platforms have in delivering educational content to our students and others interested in the College’s programming, it is important to understand how Dartmouth selects and supports the technology solutions provided to our campus.
The procurement of technology solutions to meet Dartmouth’s academic and/or administrative needs is a partnership between the procuring department (ITC or professional school IT), the Procurement Office, Information Security, and, as needed, the Office of the General Counsel.
The selection of institutional technology solutions below is based on its fit for Dartmouth’s use, its cost, its security, and its functionality. Institutional technology solutions have gone through a thorough security review and where possible are contracted as part of Higher Education consortia. This ensures that Dartmouth is contracting with vendors that understand the academic mission of our institution and respect the free and open dialogue between members of our community.
Dartmouth generally supports multiple solutions to provide similar functionality. The purpose of this approach is to allow for a broad range of use cases where one solution may be better suited over another. Additionally, this allows for redundancy of service such that we are not overly dependent on one vendor. While in recent months, Zoom has been the preferred solution at Dartmouth, it is not the only solution.
In addition to contractual terms that are put into place between Dartmouth and the vendor, it is commonly the case that users accept the vendor’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policies by using the platform. These terms, as well as applicable laws and regulations of the country in which vendors operate, govern the use of these collaboration tools.
The following is a list of Dartmouth’s institutional technology solutions that provide some form of video conferencing/meeting functionality and their user-facing Terms of Service and Privacy statements
Censorship Concerns
We are aware of a recent event that was blocked by several leading providers of video conferencing/webinar services due to an alleged breach of the providers’ Terms of Service. We have been in close touch with vendor representatives to confirm that the privacy of our users is respected (e.g., that companies are not monitoring communications or events but rather responding to reports of abuse), as well as to register concerns around service disruptions based on the content of an event. ITC will remain in contact with these vendors to ensure that channels of communication are open and that we are able to advocate for our users. In the event the above services do not meet your needs, please contact ITC or your professional school IT department.