Professor Isaac Kamola Holds AAUP Panel Event on Threats to Academic Freedom

Caitlin Doherty ’26

Executive News Editor

On Friday, Sept. 14, 2024, the American Association of University Professor’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom hosted “Understanding Evolving Threats to Academic Freedom,” a panel discussion focused on how anti-DEI and conservative legislation, rhetoric, and donors are impacting higher education institutions across the country. The Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom has a central “aim of examining and confronting the recent surge of political and ideological attacks on American higher education,” according to its mission statement. Trinity College Assistant Professor of Political Science Isaac Kamola was named the Director of this new AAUP center in early 2024. His scholarship, particularly his white paper “Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023,” has guided research that the Center plans to pursue and was mentioned frequently during the panel on Friday.

Professor Kamola introduced the event and its four panelists, who are all fellows of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Dr. Barrett Taylor works at the University of North Texas as a professor and the coordinator of the higher education program.   Dr. Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University.  Dr. Sumi Cho works at the African American Policy Forum as Director of Strategic Initiatives.  Dr. Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington Law School. The moderator of the panel was Dr. Afshan Jafar, who is the President of the Connecticut State Conference of the AAUP and the May Buckley Sadowski ’19 Professor of Sociology Connecticut College.  

During the event, each panelist was allotted about ten minutes to share their perspectives and research on the issue of academic freedom in higher education and threats that students and faculty face at institutions across the country.  Dr. Taylor began by discussing the “changing governance model in higher education” that has occurred in recent years with changing policies like critical race theory bans undermining shared governance protections.  The panelists all discussed the wave of anti-progressive legislation and rhetoric that has flooded discussions surrounding higher education in the past several years.  They highlighted bans on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in Florida, restrictions on what can be taught about the United States’ history of racial violence and enslavement, conservative donors and companies that give millions of dollars to influence policy decisions within both the government and higher education and the firing of university administrators and faculty for their response to recent protests.  Dr. Mary Anne Franks poignantly stated that in 2022, six out of eight of the presidents of Ivy League universities were women; now, there are only two women among this group.   “Dark money scholars reveal how the war on wokeness is actually a war on democracy, ” said Dr. Cho in her discussion of how ideals of anti-Blackness, such as bans on affirmative action and restrictions on the teaching of racial history, and attacks on democratic governance have disrupted the American system of higher education. “Something has changed significantly . . . in how higher education works and how our government works,” said Dr. MacLean, as she reasoned that much of the anti-progressive policy and governance changes that the other panelists discussed are being driven by conservative donors and right-wing think tanks that wish to embed their ideology in colleges and universities.  “These institutions are being driven by insanely rich activist donors… [who] enlist misinformation.”