Exposing the University of Michigan’s Violence Against Chinese Scholars
Megan Russell for Codepink On Friday night, CODEPINK and the local University of Michigan community gathered to hold a vigil in honor of UM researcher Dr. Danhao Wan on the…
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From Campus To Bank Account: The Expanding War On Free Speech
From campus arrests to banking shutdowns, dissent is no longer debated—it’s punished. Joshua Scheer The crackdown on dissent in the United States is no longer abstract—it’s operational. What was once…
From BBC to ICE Detention: The Arrest of Yousof Azizi and the Collapse of “Free Speech”
Iranian academic and media commentator faces deportation as supporters warn of political retaliation against anti-war voices Joshua Scheer Inspired by the growing campaign to free Yousof Azizi, I looked deeper…
How Corporatism Paved the Way For The MAGAcademy Takeover of Higher Education
How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed Nolan Higdon Note: The following is an excerpt from the book MAGAcademy. By purchasing the book through Project…
Academic Freedom May Be Flourishing at America’s Best Liberal Arts Colleges, But They Are Still in Danger of Losing Their Distinctiveness
Austin Sarat ScheerPost In late January, Professor Ian Bogost published a very flattering account of four premier liberal arts colleges: Amherst (where I teach), Davidson, Smith, and Vassar. As he…
The Palestine Exception: Why Academic Freedom Stops Here
A tenured professor can spend decades building a career, win awards, earn lifetime recognition, and still be discarded the moment political speech crosses an invisible line. That is what happened…
Silencing Student Reporters Threatens Public’s Right to Know
Jim Rodenbush for Project Censored I faced a decision last October that would dramatically change my professional and personal life. I could enforce a directive from Indiana University administrators to…
Private Eyes on Campus: The New Era of Student Monitoring and Suppression
Posted by Joshua Scheer A few weeks ago we had a chance to speak with Hannah Epstein. Sadly, as the American empire descends into its last gasps, we have fallen…
America Faces a New “Sputnik” Moment, and Our Future Depends on Our Colleges and Universities
By Austin Sarat for ScheerPost It is hardly news that America’s colleges and universities are in serious trouble. Declining public confidence, politically motivated attacks, and the withdrawal of government funding…
Fired for Doing Journalism? Inside the Crackdown on Student Press at UT Dallas
For ScheerPost’s Academic Freedom Project, we are looking to speak with both professors and student journalists covering what’s happening on their campuses and the attacks on the freedoms we hold…
“Tyrants Hate Truth”: Austin Sarat on the New War Against Academic Freedom
Welcome to Academic Freedom on Life Support, hosted by Joshua Scheer. In this episode, we speak with Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at…
When a Deportation Case Falls Apart, Free Speech Is on Trial
Posted by Joshua Scheer In an era of hypercharged politics and hardened rhetoric around immigration, it is easy for individual cases to blur into abstraction. But every so often, one…
From Civil Rights to Political Retribution: Trump’s Escalating War on Harvard
Posted By Joshua Scheer What began as a civil rights probe has metastasized into a naked political shakedown, with the White House demanding up to $1 billion from Harvard while…
Does Careerism Threaten Academic Commitment and Academic Freedom?
By Austin Sarat and Leah Schmalzbauer A survey of employers released on Jan. 13 brought bad news for college students entering the workforce in 2026. Among its worrisome results, “Small…
Academic Freedom: Trump’s University Blackmail Results
The Trump administration has reached deals with six universities following the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds and grants.