We spent the hour investigating our institution’s academic freedom policies, asking questions of whom those policies included and excluded. What’s new is the scale and diversity of academic work now performed by nonfaculty academic professionals. Rather than the outdated single “staff” category, colleges and universities need at least three distinct categories that reflect how staff work actually happens. Academic staff: Professionals engaged in teaching, research, curriculum design and educational assessment, including learning center directors, faculty developers, institutional researchers, professional academic advisers and academic program directors. But without policy frameworks that acknowledge and protect this academic work, institutions risk undermining the very innovations they’ve created.