#academic-freedom

#academic-freedom

Dear Colleagues, We at University Administration are now prepared to issue our Academic Freedom guidelines for your classes. As you know from last year's memo, we in administration are strong advocates of free speech on campus. With some guidance from us, we believe you will feel more empowered to speak your mind, with proper limits. While the previous provost, president, and general counsel have "resigned," we assure you our commitment to education remains steadfast.

The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has been met with joy and relief across the Middle East and beyond. Over the past two years, outrage at Israel's war in Gaza has erupted across Europe and the US, manifesting itself in university campus protests, massive marches through countless capitals and the disruption of major sporting events. Even as hopes rise of an end to the war, international anger over Israel's actions in Gaza, which have been deemed a genocide by a UN commission of inquiry, remains raw, as evidenced by last weekend's huge rallies in Spain and Italy.

"I'm a historian of fascism and I understand that the way that authoritarian movements grow is by coming up with a boogeyman term like 'Antifa,'" said Bray, author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Playbook." "It really started after [President] Trump's executive order declaring Antifa a quote-unquote terrorist organization."

As many as 40 academics have been dismissed in recent weeks, according to the American Association of University Professors. Many were targeted by rightwing campaigners, who seized on remarks they wrote or shared, and pressured their employers to take action. The late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel became the most high-profile suspension for comments related to Kirk. Kimmel is now back on air.

This year's Banned Books Week (Oct. 5-11) comes at a moment when the threat of censorship is reaching alarming heights. According to a new report issued last week by PEN America, " Banned in the USA, 2024-2025," there were 22,810 instances of book banning in U.S. public schools from 2021 to 2025. As the coordinator of Chicago Banned Books Week, I can see a growing climate of fear where even some librarians are wary of promoting banned books.

At least five tenured faculty members have been terminated or put on leave over comments they made on social media following the killing of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. As tenured professors, in theory they should have some of the strongest job security protections in the country, especially when it comes to freedom of expression. But the speed with which they were punished for their speech suggests an erosion of tenure protections years in the making.

A new report released Monday by the American Association of University Professors and its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure argues that the Trump administration has weaponized federal civil rights laws with a goal of discrediting colleges and compromising their academic freedom and institutional autonomy. The report focuses in part on a surge of investigations that have been launched by the Department of Education since Oct. 7, 2023, especially those that involve national origin and religion.

When Texas A&M University president Mark Welsh resigned amid an academic freedom controversy last week, he became the institution's second leader to step down due to scandal in two years. Unlike his predecessor, Kathy Banks, who retired in 2023 after she was caught lying about a hiring scandal, Welsh remained popular on campus; faculty sent theBoard of Regents letters of support last week following a controversy that prompted him to fire an instructor,and students rallied on his behalf. But he seemed to lose the support of the deep-red Texas Legislature: Several Republican lawmakers called for his dismissal after a discussion over gender identity between a student and a professor in a children's literature class was captured on video and quickly went viral.

Today is Constitution Day, marking the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of the Constitution by the 39 delegates at the Constitutional Convention who had written its words. And 238 years later, we face the worst assault on the constitutional rights protecting academic freedom in all of American history. In less than nine months, Donald Trump's administration has engaged in more unconstitutional actions attacking free expression in higher education than all of the 44 previous presidents combined.

Then they return with force, helping us understand today's world, explaining how and when it fell apart, and what allowed someone like Donald Trump to rise to power. The American theorist, a leading voice in progressive thought, dissects causes and consequences with surgical precision in each of his books, and never shies away from bringing some of the great ideas of classical and contemporary thought to everyday citizens.

Political and social changes in the U.S. and other Western democracies in the 21st century have triggered growing concerns about possible erosion of academic freedom. In the past, colleges and universities largely decided whom to admit and hire, what to teach, and which research to support. Increasingly, those prerogatives are being challenged. In a new working paper, Pippa Norris, the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, looked at academic freedom and found it faces two very different but dangerous threats.

We, scholars dedicated to questions of justice and ethics, stand firm in our support of Palestine Action, recognizing the importance of collective defiance in the face of oppression.