The Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom is very excited to share the first episode of our “Academic Freedom on the Line” Podcast, hosted by CDAF fellow, Vineeta Singh, and produced in partnership with the American Association of University Professors AAUP Presents.
The assaults on academic freedom coming out of the Trump administration have been relentless, though as
the director of CDAF reminds us in this opening episode, we shouldn’t be surprised, as Vice President J.D. Vance had previously declared professors “the enemy.”The enemy of what is explored in this conversation between Vineeta, Isaac, and two additional CDAF fellows, Tim Cain, a scholar of academic freedom, and
, an expert on the intersection of politics and public services. What becomes clear through this conversation is that Trump’s attacks on higher education are part of a larger program to gain authoritarian control over key democratic institutions.Even inside of CDAF we sometimes shy away from the term “academic freedom” because we worry people will see it as elitist, or a perk reserved for a rarified class of people. As someone who has spent his career inside and adjacent to academia who has never had those enumerated rights, I’m sympathetic to this critique, but this conversation makes it clear that in the words of Tim Cain, we’re looking at “an attack on the common good,” part of many other simultaneous attacks.
This is an excellent primer for anyone who wants to be more thoughtful and knowledgeable about why defending academic freedom is a necessary part of the larger defense of democracy.
—
Show Notes
This episode kicks off a new limited series hosted by the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF), AAUP Presents: Academic Freedom on the Line. CDAF serves as a resource and knowledge hub for all people—including faculty, students, campus workers, alumni, administrators, trustees, parents, journalists, policymakers, and business leaders—seeking to build a flourishing higher education system, rooted in institutional autonomy, workplace democracy, and freedom from coercion and external interference. Its current projects include an Academic Freedom field guide that curates resources for individuals, institutions, and organizations facing attacks on academic freedom and Executive Power Watch, tracking executive orders that impact higher education with fact sheets that break down what these new policies are intended for and how campus leaders can resist them.
The guests are center Director Isaac Kamola and CDAF fellows Tim Cain, Don Moynihan, and Vineeta Singh. Isaac Kamola is an associate professor of political science at Trinity College. He is also the founder of Faculty First Responders, a program that monitors right-wing attacks on academics and provides resources to help faculty members and administrators respond to manufactured outrage. Tim Cain is a professor in the University of Georgia’s Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education and associate editor for the Review of Higher Education. Don Moynihan is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab. Vineeta Singh is associate director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be the host for this limited series.
Links:
AAUP Presents episode “Political Interference in Higher Ed: Escalations, Attacks, and the Billionaires Behind It”
Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom | AAUP
Publications: Executive Power Watch, Action Reports, etc.
Share this post