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…
BY AMY LAI Academic freedom is generally defined as the freedom to engage in activities involved in the production of knowledge, without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Interferences with academic freedom can come from within the academy, such as in the form of institutional pressures, but may also come…
BY SHAWN GILMORE It’s now been a few weeks since the second Trump administration offered its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” first to nine institutions, then to the rest of us. Containing a range of provisions, the agreement would limit the autonomy of any institution that signed on in exchange for continued access…
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…
BY ANDREW JOSEPH PEGODA People have the right to take gender studies classes. These classes include an emphasis on how patriarchy and gender stereotypes affect everyone. Negative impacts of boys being told “don’t cry” and girls being told “be quiet” are important and long-lasting. States controlled by conservative politicians have increasingly sought to ban gender…
BY YASHA HARTBERG Across the country, the foundations of academic freedom and shared governance are under strain. Legislatures are rewriting university missions. Boards are bypassing faculty senates to close programs, mandate ideological “balance,” and discipline professors for political speech, real or imagined. Even at institutions once thought insulated from such incursions, the authority of faculty…
BY MAX WEISS “I am anti-Israel, I am anti-Zionist also, but I am NOT anti-Jewish.” So said Palestinian intellectual Fayez A. Sayegh in 1956. I was reminded of this statement, a sentiment I personally share, on October 2, when members of the Princeton community received an email from Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE It’s not surprising that Charlie Kirk’s followers would laud him as a champion of free speech even while exploiting his death to stifle the speech of others who saw him as no kind of hero. This is, after all, what partisans are apt to do. The point isn’t to defend a principle—freedom…
BY HANK REICHMAN The other day I had occasion to speak with a leader of the AAUP chapter at Columbia University, my alma mater. I mentioned to him how useful and impressive I have found the coverage of university events in the student-run campus daily newspaper, the Spectator. He agreed that the students have done an…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2025 issue of Academe, “Defending Academic Values,” out this week. The full issue and table of contents can be found here. Sather Gate, pictured on this issue’s cover, marks the entrance to the heart of the University of California’s Berkeley campus. With Sproul Plaza on one…