\n<\/p>\n
Defending academic freedom is an all-hands-on-deck emergency. From the current administration\u2019s scrutiny of (and executive orders related to) higher education, to state legislative overreach and on-campus bad actors, threats to academic freedom are myriad and dire. <\/p>\n
As leader of a program focused on free expression and academic freedom, I see faculty and campus leaders who are flummoxed about how to respond: Where to begin? What can be done to make a difference in defending academic freedom?<\/p>\n
I have an answer, at least if you\u2019re graduate faculty, a dean or director of graduate studies, or a provost: Make a plan to prepare graduate students\u2014tomorrow\u2019s professors\u2014to defend academic freedom.<\/p>\n
Graduate students often feel too pressed to focus on anything other than their coursework or dissertation and so are unlikely to study academic freedom on their own, even if they know where to find solid information. It is incumbent on faculty to put academic freedom in front of graduate students as a serious and approachable topic. If their professors and directors of graduate study do not teach them about academic freedom, they will be ill prepared to confront academic freedom issues when they arise, as they surely will, especially in today\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n
An example: When I met with advanced graduate students at an R-1 university, one student recounted an experience as a junior team member reviewing submissions for a journal. He reported that another team member argued for rejecting a manuscript because its findings could be used to advance a public policy position favored by some politicians that this colleague opposed. The student was rightly troubled about political factors being weighed along with methodology and scholarship but reported he didn\u2019t have the knowledge or confidence to respond effectively. Bottom line: His graduate school preparation had incompletely prepared him to understand and act on academic freedom principles.<\/p>\n
Here is a summer action plan for graduate faculty, deans and provosts to ensure we don\u2019t leave the next generation of scholars uncertain about academic freedom principles and how they apply in teaching, scholarship and extracurricular settings.<\/p>\n
Add an academic freedom session to orientation.<\/strong> Orientation for matriculating graduate students is a can\u2019t-miss chance to begin education about academic freedom.<\/p>\n Patrick Kain, associate professor of philosophy at Purdue University, provides a primer on graduate students\u2019 academic freedom rights and responsibilities during his department\u2019s graduate student orientation. His session covers the First Amendment, state law and campus policies. He provides written guidance about what to do, especially in their roles as teaching assistants (\u201cpay attention to the effects of your expression on others\u201d); what not to do (\u201cdon\u2019t compel speech\u201d); and what they should expect (\u201cstudents\u2019 experiences and sensitivity to others\u2019 expression will vary\u201d).<\/p>\n Reflecting on his experiences leading these orientation sessions, Kain said, \u201cGraduate students, especially those joining us from quite different cultures and institutions, really appreciate a clear explanation of the ground rules of academic freedom and free expression on campus.\u201d He added, \u201cIt puts them at ease to be able to imagine how they can pursue their own work with integrity in these trying times, and what they can expect from others when disagreements arise.\u201d<\/p>\n However, orientation cannot be a \u201cone and done\u201d for a topic as complex as academic freedom. Additional steps to take this summer include:<\/p>\n Revisit the professional development seminar.<\/strong> Most graduate students take a professional development seminar before preliminary exams. When I\u00a0took that seminar three decades ago, academic freedom wasn\u2019t a topic\u2014and my inquiries suggest academic freedom hasn\u2019t been added to many professional development seminars since. This must change. In addition to sessions on writing a publishable article and giving a job talk, include sessions on the history and norms of academic freedom and free inquiry. Assign foundational academic freedom documents, such as the American Association of University Professors\u2019 1940 Statement on the Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure and the 1967 Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, alongside a text offering an overview of academic freedom principles, such as Henry Reichman\u2019s Understanding Academic Freedom<\/em> (Johns Hopkins Press, 2025).<\/p>\n Schedule an academic freedom workshop.<\/strong> Graduate students at all stages\u2014and your faculty colleagues, too!\u2014can benefit from stand-alone workshops. Include tabletop exercises that allow students to appreciate nuances of academic freedom principles. For example, tabletop exercises let students test possible responses to a peer who is putting a thumb on the scale against publishing a manuscript submission on nonacademic grounds, to department colleagues who are exerting pressure on them to sign a joint statement with which they disagree or to administrators bowing inappropriately to donor wishes or political pressures. The reports of the Council of Independent Colleges\u2019 Academic Leaders Task Force on Campus Free Expression include ready-for-use tabletop exercises.<\/em><\/p>\n Bolster classroom training for teaching assistants.<\/strong> Professors with teaching assistants can provide an insider\u2019s look into their process for designing a course and planning class meetings, with a focus on how they build trust and incorporate divergent viewpoints, and their approach to teaching potentially controversial topics. In weekly TA meetings, professors and TAs can debrief about what worked to foster robust discussion and what didn\u2019t. Centers for teaching and learning can equip graduate students with strategies that build their confidence for leading discussions, including strategies to uphold free expression and inclusive values when a student speaks in ways that others think is objectionable or violates inclusion norms. The University of Michigan\u2019s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching offers programs tailored to graduate students and postdocs, including a teaching orientation program.<\/p>\n Look for opportunities to provide mentorship.<\/strong> An academic career isn\u2019t only about teaching and scholarship but also entails serving on department and university committees, providing\u2014and being subject to\u2014peer review, and planning conferences. Academic freedom questions come up with regularity during these activities. Graduate faculty serve as mentors and should be alert to opportunities to discuss these questions. One idea: Take a \u201cripped from the headlines\u201d controversy about journal retractions, viral faculty social media posts or how universities are responding to Trump administration pressures and plan a brown-bag lunch discussion with graduate students.<\/p>\n Take the next step in rethinking graduate student preparation.<\/strong> While the steps above can be taken this summer, with a longer planning horizon, it is possible to rethink graduate preparation for a changed higher education landscape. Morgan State University, a public HBCU in Maryland, offers Morgan\u2019s Structured Teaching Assistant Program (MSTAP), an award-winning course series to prepare graduate students as teachers. Mark Garrison, who as dean of the School of Graduate Studies led the development of MSTAP, explained, \u201cIn our required coursework for teaching assistants, we are intensely focused on establishing ground rules for TAs\u201d around how to guide \u201cstudent engagement that is accepting and encouraging without the intrusion of the TA\u2019s personal views.\u201d<\/p>\n Garrison added, \u201cThis makes free expression a component of instruction that must be cherished and nourished. We cannot assume that the novice instructor will come to this view naturally, and we do our best to embrace a reflective teaching model.\u201d<\/p>\n Academic freedom is under threat. As Mary Clark, provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of Denver, observed, \u201cGraduate students are developing identities as scholars, learning what academic freedom means in their research and in the classroom\u2014and how their scholarly identity intersects with their extracurricular speech as citizens and community members. It is critical that we support them in developing these understandings.\u201d This summer is the time to plan to do exactly that.<\/p>\n Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill is senior director of the Civic Learning and Free Expression Projects at the Council of Independent Colleges<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Defending academic freedom is an all-hands-on-deck emergency. From the current administration\u2019s scrutiny of (and executive orders related to) higher education, to state legislative overreach and on-campus bad actors, threats to academic freedom are myriad and dire. As leader of a program focused on free expression and academic freedom, I see faculty and campus leaders who<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4106,6095,5874,6457,440,6784,678],"class_list":{"0":"post-13086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-academic","9":"tag-defend","10":"tag-freedom","11":"tag-grad","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-preparing","14":"tag-students"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}