A panel appointed to review Creighton’s outside speaker policies and procedures found that each invitation would require individual attenton.

Patrick Borchers, head of the task force and vice president for Academic Affairs, said the speaker’s notoriety, the event, the audience size, the subject matter and the environment are a few decisive factors.

The panel was appointed by the Rev. John P. Schlegel, S.J., university president, about a year ago. It was formed after university officials rescinded an invitation to author Anne Lamott, who was scheduled to deliver the Creighton Center Health Policy and Ethic’s 2007 Women and Health Lecture. Lamott wrote an essay in which she describes helping a friend who had a terminal illness commit suicide.

“While I certainly respect her right to express her views and admire her frankness in doing so, her views are so clearly in opposition to the sacredness of life from conception to natural death that I could not, in good conscience, allow the university to place its imprimatur on her lecture,” Schlegel said in a letter to the faculty at the time of the cancellation.

The panel also found the review was necessary to smooth out misunderstandings within the old policy, which had been drafted in 1988. They determined that the old policy led readers to believe that the procedures only applied to student groups on campus. In reality, the policy is meant to act as a set of guidelines for any outside speaker scheduled to lecture on Creighton’s campus.

“Some of it was, perhaps, a little too general, and over the years, you run into some disputes about what is and what is not in keeping with the policies,” Schlegel said Monday in an interview with the Creightonian.

The new policies state that the invitee is in charge of initially determining whether a speaker is controversial. According to the procedures, if the speaker is controversial, the sponsor must inform relevant administrators of the event.

“We’re certainly not going to have a situation where the central university administration looks down from on high and referees every single person who gets an invitation,” Borchers said. “That’s not consistent with our values.”

The policies exemplify the struggle between academic freedom and an institution’s values, a problem many colleges and universities around the country are trying to solve.

Christine Maitland, organizational specialist for the National Education Association, defines academic freedom as “ensuring the space is open to critical inquiry and academic debate and keeping that space open in the classroom.” The NEA has always made academic freedom a priority because of its effect on the educational environment.

While this struggle produces debate between university scholars and administration, Borchers said it’s not a problem without a solution.

“I don’t think those two things are as opposed as some people think they are,” Borchers said. “I think it’s perfectly fine and required by our Jesuit tradition to take on difficult topics. We have to do that in a way that doesn’t cloud people’s perception about Creighton as an institution.”

Konni Cawiezell, a Creighton alumna, received her undergraduate education from Iowa State University and was a senior law student at Creighton when she joined the task force. Cawiezell said she wanted the new policy to allow a broad array of perspectives to be presented.

“The [college] experience should be mind-opening, not mind-closing,” she said. “However, as a Catholic law student at a Jesuit university, I had to balance this with Creighton being able to stay true to the Jesuit mission without keeping students from having every opportunity for exposure to new and differing ideas.”

The new policy was scheduled to be presented to the Academic Council for its comment Thursday. Schlegel said the policy should have integrity and reflect the mission and identity of the university. At the same time, he said it should be a policy that is flexible enough to address the issues of today.

“I think that policy does that very nicely,” he said. “They [the task force] put it all in the context of a Catholic, private university. The vast majority of people should be very, very pleased with it.”