POSTED BY THE AAUP
We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 16 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, “Philanthropy and Academic Freedom,” invited scholarly articles that address the impact of large private donations on academic freedom and the educational mission of colleges and universities at a time when fiscal constraints—resulting from decades of disinvestment in public higher education—form the backdrop for increasing dependence on philanthropy. The concerns we raised when we released the call for papers, just weeks before the 2024 election, have magnified dramatically since then, with a new presidential administration increasingly weaponizing federal funding as an instrument of ideological control in its broader attacks on higher education. Colleges and universities are more vulnerable—and susceptible to private donor influence—than ever.
This year’s volume brings together articles that probe this uneasy relationship between philanthropy and academic freedom. Our introduction, “Philanthropy, Public Funding, and the Future of Academic Freedom,” organizes the volume’s fourteen articles, which represent a range of disciplines and perspectives, into four sections that examine whether neoliberalism has proven compatible with academic freedom, how donor-influence campaigns shape higher education, how philanthropy intersects with racial capitalism to “whitewash” knowledge, and how tensions between private interests and the common good continue to reconfigure the academic landscape. Collectively, the contributions show that academic freedom cannot be defended without critically examining the financial infrastructures and political economies that sustain or threaten it.
We encourage readers to forward this email to friends and colleagues and to share links to article web pages on social media. You can access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/JAF16 or click on titles in the table of contents below. Please also read the call for papers for next year’s volume, “Academic Freedom as a Practice of Democracy.” The 2026 volume will be edited by incoming faculty editor Karim Mattar of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Submissions are due by March 9, 2026.
—Michael Dreiling and Pedro García-Caro, Faculty Coeditors
The Journal of Academic Freedom is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.
Table of Contents
Editors’ Introduction: Philanthropy, Public Funding, and the Future of Academic Freedom
By Michael Dreiling and Pedro García-Caro
Was Neoliberalism Compatible with Academic Freedom?
Shaping Public Sentiments About Higher Education in an Era of Philanthropic Dependency
By Natasha N. Johnson and Thaddeus L. Johnson
Neoliberal Philanthropy and Academic Freedom
By Rubén Martinez
The Responsible Use of Academic Freedom in an Age of Polarization
By Aaron Ansell
Donor-Influence Campaigns
From Direct to Diffuse Donor Influence: Charles Koch Foundation Funding in Higher Education, 1990–2024
By Isaac Kamola, Aaron Supple, and Ralph Wilson
UnKoch My Philosophy Department: A Case Study in Billionaire Philanthropy
By Mich Ciurria
Faculty Governance and the Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest in Private University Donations
By Jarvis Tyrell Curry
Proselytizing Speech: Florida’s Publicly Funded Conservative Centers
By Katie Rainwater and Robert Cassanello
Whitewashing Knowledge
Black Institutions, White Interests: The Dilemma of HBCUs, Academic Freedom, and Philanthropic Capture
By J. R. Caldwell Jr.
The Blueprint for Silencing Dissent in US Higher Education
By Fatemeh Almasarweh
The Double Standards of Financial Activism: Academic Freedom, Philanthropy, and BDS in Higher Education
By Noah D. Drezner
Tensions and Schisms Between the Private and the Common Good
Philanthropy, Class, and Cultural Hegemony in Music Education
By Drew X. Coles and Adara Hoyne
Conspicuously Exercising Academic Freedom as a Response to Incremental Threats
By Michael Davis
Navigating Fiscal Precarity and the Erosion of Academic Freedom in an Era of Resource Dependence in Africa: A Zambian Perspective
By Sibeso Lisulo
The State as Donor: How Indiana Uses SEA 202 and HEA 1001 to Reshape Academic Freedom and Faculty Governance
By Carlos R. Morales
