With four newly elected members on board, the College of DuPage trustees voted, 4 to 3, tonight to rescind several recently adopted policies that had been criticized by faculty organizations as threatening shared governance and academic freedom.

Among the policies that the board rescinded pending further discussion was one closely resembling the “academic bill of rights” advocated by the conservative activist David Horowitz. Students for Academic Freedom, a group founded by Mr. Horowitz, had called the board’s adoption of that policy “a historic victory.”

The board’s vote comes just weeks after the previous, lame-duck board adopted the policies over the objections of the College of DuPage Faculty Association, the Illinois Council of the American Association of University Professors, the Illinois Community College Faculty Association, and the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The American Association of University Professors and the National Council for Higher Education, an advocacy group for college employees within the National Education Association, had sent a letter to the DuPage board today urging the trustees to rescind the new policies. Three of the four board members who voted to do so were elected to the board last month. —Peter Schmidt