Metal arch with the name Northwestern University sits atop white stone columns with a backdrop of trees with green and orange leaves.

Why I am Suing Northwestern University—and the United States House of Representatives, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy

BY STEVEN W. THRASHER On July 20, I filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University and—in his official capacity as Chairman of the US House of Representatives House Committee on Education and the Workforce— Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg. The suit is also against various actors in the federal government who have pressured Northwestern, including Secretary of Education…

A yellow folder labeled "DEMOCRACY" with "CENSORED" stamped in red on it, framed by American flags

Who Will Tell America’s 250-Year Story?

BY EILEEN BORIS AND KRISTIN AHLBERG In an interview with journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Donald Trump claimed to be a great man, on par with world-shattering figures like Mao, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, and Genghis Khan—or so a “presidential historian” told him. That this presidential historian was the caddy for golfing star Gary Player…

Must “Neutrality” Mean Silence?

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday (February 5), while some 200 people protested outside the campus, two recruiters for the US Border Patrol staffed a booth at a Brigham Young University career fair in Provo, Utah. Inside the event, The Salt Lake Tribune reports, “students flocked to the ballroom for the chance to talk with recruiters from…

Close-up of the definition of "communication" with a red pushpin

A Call for Proactive University Communication Strategies

BY LOUISE PAY Understanding the strategy behind ideological attacks on university employees is the only way to counter them effectively. It’s easy to dismiss cases like the recent incident at the University of Oklahoma (OU), where a graduate instructor’s grading decision was amplified into a public controversy on X (formerly Twitter) by the OU chapter…

Fighting MAGA McCarthyism: Interviewing Tom Alter

BY BILL MULLEN Can you identify yourself and explain what happened at Texas State? My name is Tom Alter. Until being recently fired in violation of my free speech rights, I was a tenured associate professor of history at Texas State University in San Marcos, specializing in labor and working class forms of organizing and…

Two hands hold up a blank cardboard sign with blue sky in the background

Building the Protest-Free University

BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Most Americans are accustomed to authoritarianism by virtue of their daily experiences in the workplace. Managers make, interpret, and enforce the rules by which private companies operate; they say what goes, and they can use force to impose their will. Employees who resist can be disciplined or fired, often without due process…

Urgent Message from CUNY, Berkeley, and Georgetown Jewish Faculty

On July 15, 2025, City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Robert M. Groves, Interim President of Georgetown University, and Rich Lyons, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce at a hearing on “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding,…

Woman in hijab wearing a face mask and holding a phone stands at the front of a crowd carrying signs of protest, including BLACK LIVES MATTER and I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, BUT I STAND

ADL Fuels Islamophobia and Betrays Its Civil Rights Mission

BY SAHAR AZIZ For decades, when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was mentioned, it was usually in reference to combatting antisemitism. Now the ADL is more accurately cited in the litany of pro-Israeli groups attempting to criminalize Muslim and Palestinian students for seeking an end to the horrific genocide in Gaza. For over a hundred years,…

dark computer screen shows digital zeros in the background with many digital icons of lined pages with their upper right corners flipped down

Intellectual Freedom Case Repositories

BY DAVID MOSHMAN Readers of this blog may be interested in three new intellectual freedom case repositories that are now available on the MetaCat Foundation website. Feel free to take a look at them before reading on. The first repository is the Academic Freedom Gaza Case Repository, which is connected to my book-in-progress, Gaza, Genocide,…

Kenneth Stern’s Testimony Before US Senate Committee

BY HANK REICHMAN Kenneth Stern is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, which works to increase the serious study of human hatred, and ways to combat it. Before that he directed the Justus and Karin Rosenberg Foundation and before that he was for 25 years director of the American Jewish…

ACADEME BLOG

The blog of Academe magazine

Free Speech