Issue 20 — The Role and Reach of Penn's Faculty Senate

Our recent discussion of the EEOC’s investigation into antisemitic employment practices at Penn highlighted a resolution passed by Penn’s Faculty Senate in December. The resolution backs the Penn administration’s refusal to give the EEOC a list of contact information for Jewish faculty, staff, and student workers.

The episode illustrates a key role of the Faculty Senate: it is Penn’s formal mechanism for faculty shared governance and one of the few ways faculty can speak collectively on behalf of their interests.

Because of its advisory role, the Faculty Senate’s power and influence are not guaranteed. The current chair, Professor Kathleen Brown, has called for a more robust and democratic Senate. Brown’s agenda raises a broader question: at a time of heightened political pressure, funding uncertainty, and scrutiny of higher education, what role will shared governance actually play at Penn? 

Media coverage can often make it seem as though the only stakeholders who matter in Penn’s decisions are the trustees, the president, and some senior administrators. In reality, other groups, including faculty, can meaningfully shape university decisions and operations.

The role faculty governance can play in shaping university policy is visible at Penn’s peer institutions. Columbia’s recent experience highlights the risks that can arise when faculty governance operates without clear boundaries around its role and authority.

At Columbia, protest-related discipline became a test case for its Senate’s power. Its University Senate asserted roles in disciplinary policy, interpretation, and case review outside of the duties assigned by the university’s governing rules. After sustained conflict between the Senate and senior leadership over protest-related cases, Columbia’s trustees formally removed the University Senate from any role in governing the Rules of University Conduct.

At Penn, by contrast, the Faculty Senate was created by the Board of Trustees in 1952, and it represents the standing faculty in discussions of university policy, academic standards, and institutional direction. Much of its authority is advisory, but its influence can be real, and its legitimacy depends on how that influence is exercised.

Whether a more active Senate strengthens faculty governance, strains relations with university leadership, or reshapes Penn’s decision-making culture will help define the role of shared governance during a period of institutional stress.

The Faculty Senate is a university-wide body made up of Penn’s standing faculty, including tenure-track and tenured professors and certain clinician educators. All eligible faculty are members of the Senate in a formal sense, but most of the work happens through a smaller group of officers, committees, and a central leadership body known as the Senate Executive Committee (SEC).

On paper, the Senate’s role is advisory. It can request information from the administration, pass resolutions, and make recommendations to university leadership and trustees, but it does not make final policy decisions. In practice, its influence depends on its credibility, the seriousness and effort with which Senate leaders engage in governance, and the extent to which the administration is willing to listen.

The Senate is led by three officers: the Chair, Chair-elect, and Past Chair. Together, they set agendas, appoint committee members, and represent the faculty in regular meetings with the president and provost. These consultations are one of the ways faculty concerns and perspectives reach senior university leadership.

The SEC is where much of the Senate’s influence is concentrated. Made up of the Senate’s officers and elected faculty representatives from across Penn, the SEC is authorized to act on timely issues between full Senate meetings. Its actions must be publicly reported, and faculty can challenge or overturn them through petitions or mail ballots.

Much of the Senate’s work is carried out through standing committees focused on academic freedom, faculty economic status, the academic mission, student and educational policy, faculty relations with the administration, and faculty development and equity. Committee reports and recommendations are typically published in Penn’s Almanac for transparency.

This year’s Senate chair, Professor Kathleen Brown, has called for a reinvigorated Senate. In her opening remarks as chair, Brown argued that the Senate should play a more engaged role in shared governance, particularly when faculty across schools face exposure to political pressure, funding uncertainty, and shifting institutional priorities. 

Rather than redefining the Senate’s authority outright, Brown’s focus has been on process: how the Senate listens, deliberates, and understands the range of faculty perspectives it is meant to represent. That can strengthen legitimacy, but it can also amplify factional dynamics if participation is uneven or dominated by the most mobilized constituencies. 

Brown’s early steps have made faculty input more routine and visible. In September, Brown proposed reserving time at each SEC meeting for members to report back from their constituencies. Since then, constituency reports have become a standing part of SEC meetings.

So far, Brown’s agenda has focused more on setting direction than delivering outcomes. These changes carry relatively low institutional risk, but they also raise larger questions.

The Senate’s structure can further concentrate influence among those most engaged in governance, raising the risk that the loudest voices come to stand in for broader faculty opinion.

A Senate that listens more broadly may surface deeper disagreements within the faculty or sharpen tensions with the administration. Expanded deliberation can slow decision-making and test how much influence shared governance can realistically exert when major decisions are shaped by external political and financial pressures.

At the same time, expanding participation and the reach of governance can strengthen faculty legitimacy if it results in a Senate that more accurately reflects the interests and concerns of the broader faculty.

Still, Brown has framed this year as the beginning of a longer effort. If she follows through on her stated goal of revitalizing the Senate, more substantive changes may emerge in the coming semester. Whether those changes strengthen the faculty’s role in university governance, or more clearly expose its limits, will be one of the central tests of the Senate under her leadership.

Curated highlights from this week’s Penn news

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