BY PEDRO GARCÍA-CARO

The University of Oregon’s Office of the Provost will host an online conference devoted to “Academic Freedom and the Public University” on Friday, October 14, 2022. Building on the university’s public defense of academic freedom, we invite faculty and administrators from other colleges and universities to participate. This conference will focus on external interference from politicians, civil society, and the media that constrain or impede the faculty exercise of its academic freedom. In addition to stimulating vigorous discussion, both within and across universities, this conference aims to identify institutional strategies, policies, and practices that successfully promote, bolster, and protect the faculty’s academic freedom. We have an exciting lineup of keynote speakers that includes current AAUP president Irene Mulvey; Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities; Eric K. Ward, senior advisor at Western States Center; James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association; and Sumi Cho, director of strategic initiatives at the African American Policy Forum. The program of the conference is organized around the five keynote presentations and three panels, each detailing a specific context in the ongoing challenges to academic freedom: political interference; donors, media, and civil society organizations; and new directions in the study of academic freedom (including issues related to book bans, gag laws, and critical race theory).

Assaults on public higher education have deep cultural and political roots in the United States. Yet the perils university faculty face today are especially acute, including sanctions from legislators and donors, social media harassment, violent threats, and other forms of intimidation. Curricula and research specializations are subject to unprecedented public scrutiny and criticism. In short, the contemporary political landscape has reshaped the contours of academic freedom at public universities.

There has never been a more urgent time to discuss and defend academic freedom. The unrelenting encroachment of market ideologies, religious bigotry, partisanship, and authoritarian ethnonationalism has made critical thinking in the academy increasingly dangerous and uncertain. All recent accounts and public debates about academic freedom in the United States and elsewhere have one constant theme in common: academic freedom is under open attack on multiple fronts. While tenure is increasingly challenged by neoliberal structures that favor corporate top-down decision making and hiring and firing flexibilities over faculty shared governance, academics are increasingly pressured to embrace their status as members of an atomized entrepreneurial workforce rather than as the stewards of public trust in the ethical and socially conscious advance of human knowledge. The additional political pressures exercised by public administrations and donors to censor or control the production of critical knowledge about ethnicity, history, or culture extends to many other disciplines and it has an impact on the autonomy of academics to carry out their research and their teaching free from the intervention or overview of partisan agents.

Conformism, orthodoxy, or profit-making do not offer the best solutions to face critically and creatively our past, present, and future. Without academic freedom, critical thinking and the creation of new knowledge become dangerous and often impossible. The organizers look forward to a robust conversation and participation from colleagues across our campus and beyond. We hope the conference will contribute to the defense of critical thinking and academic freedom in the public university.

Join the discussion this Friday.

—University of Oregon “Academic Freedom and the Public University” Organizing Committee
Gabe Paquette, vice provost for academic affairs and professor of history
Joe Lowndes, professor of political science and provost fellow
Pedro García-Caro, associate professor Spanish and provost fellow
Katy Krieger, PhD, project manager, Office of the Provost

Pedro García-Caro is faculty coeditor, along with Michael Dreiling, for the upcoming 2022 volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom, which will feature articles responding to the call for papers “Memory Laws or Gag Laws? Disinformation Meets Academic Freedom.”