“The Assault on Academic Freedom and the Crisis of Higher Education”
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| Ticket Info: | Free |
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Academic Administrative Assistant
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| Sponsor(s): | Ohio State University Humanities Institute |
The philosopher John Dewey once wrote: “Any attack, or even any restriction, upon academic freedom is directed against the university itself.” Today, the Trump administration’s widely publicized efforts to extort and subdue prominent research universities are but one example of a wide-ranging assault on academic freedom in which the federal and state governments, political pressure groups, and university trustees and administrators themselves have been complicit, far exceeding anything in prior US history, including the anti-Communist scare of the 1950s. This poses a crisis for all of higher education, one that demands both a staunch defense and a reinvigoration of the university’s fundamental mission.
About Henry Reichman
Henry Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay, and the author of The Future of Academic Freedom (2019) and Understanding Academic Freedom (2021, 2nd ed. 2025), which has been called “best book on the subject.” He is a former national vice-president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and a former chair of AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.