The Assault on Academic Freedom and the Crisis of Higher Education

This year's William Hammond Lecture on the American Tradition will feature Henry “Hank” Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University East Bay, co-editor of the AAUP’s Academe blog, president of the AAUP's at-large chapter and member of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance.

The lecture engages with academic freedom and identifies a widespread crisis in American higher education. 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.

This event is free, open to the public and welcoming to everyone.

In 165 Thompson Library. The nearest parking is the Tuttle Garage.

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Host or Publisher OSU Humanities Institute