Photograph of a classroom, potentially at the Johnston County Training School, Smithfield, North Carolina (ca. 1921–22) | State Archives of North Carolina / No known copyright restrictions
In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, before Donald Trump took office and started to threaten universities with the withdrawal of federal grants, it was already clear that academic freedom had become increasingly disregarded by university administrations. It is difficult to make an argument that will not become outdated by the time it is published. And yet, writing in the midst of shifting historical circumstances always runs that risk. Although academic freedom is not under attack everywhere, it is increasingly attacked in the United States, where its precepts have been generally regarded as part of the normative framework within which institutions of higher education operate. On this late November day when I am writing, not knowing the severity of the attacks to come, one knows that both academic freedom and constitutional rights of expression are under attack, and yet such alarms are often accompanied by a muddled understanding of the relation between the two. The status of extramural speech raises precisely the question of what this relation is, and, in my view, it contains the potential for articulating the importance of academic freedom to living in a constitutional democracy. Indeed, the violation of academic freedom protections for the extramural speech of faculty is but one instance of new tactics of censorship and job termination. The debates over how best to understand extramural speech may seem narrow, if not scholastic, but precisely because they overlap with constitutional rights and some of those rights are targeted for violation, suspension, or repeal, it makes sense to ask not only why extramural protections are so quickly falling away, but also why constitutional protections fundamental to US democratic traditions and norms are proving to be dangerously fragile.
It is no overstatement to note that the recent presidential election holds consequences for constitutional rights and for the very future of democracy. The American people have by a clear majority voted against democracy, but they have done this through an electoral process that is part of democracy, even indispensable to its operation. And yet, the people can, and have, opposed democracy, exercising their popular will in order to elect someone who has promised to destroy the balance of powers, to initiate mass deportations, and to undo constitutional protections step by step. The president’s power will be augmented by a Republican Senate and House, but also by the Supreme Court, which, with its current extreme-right majority, has already begun to relinquish its own power to check and to balance. Several questions emerge for us to think about in this time. Democracy is rule by and of the people, but who are the people? Given that 35 percent of eligible voters (90 million) did not cast a ballot (Kronenberg 2024), which people have become the people? Those millions who did not vote effectively deactivated democratic procedure for themselves. Hence, some voted against democracy, but others disengaged from democracy, and together they constitute a significant majority.
Of course, democracy is not reducible to its parliamentary form, and yet those who seek to undo electoral institutions are clearly seeking to undo democracy. This is the paradox—not the contradiction—with which we are now confronted. The Electoral College, for instance, has always been a defense against the powers of democracy, even as it is, in the US, one of its parliamentary instruments. It was founded on the belief that the people do not have the education or capacity to judge what is right for themselves and that a select group of electors should be invested with the power to decide what the true or best will of the people should be. It is an example of an antidemocratic parliamentary institution charged with the task of undoing democracy in the name of its defense. As indispensable as parliamentary procedures are to democracy, they are not enough to secure its future. Democracy also occurs in fugitive (Wolin 2018) and wild (Norton 2023) forms that are not captured by the vote and are certainly not represented by those who, through becoming elected, seek to strip the rights of those who assemble and speak for justice, for those who deserve to apply for residency or citizenship, for those who are working at a wage that leaves them unhoused or with unpayable debt, subject to financial forms of terrorism (Gago and Cavallero 2023). When the shock is done, we will, I think, look around and ask what communities we might serve, what bonds of solidarity we can now make, and what practices of radical care and support we can offer. It is a bind of extraordinary proportion when the will of the people proves to be against the will of the people or withdrawn from participatory politics. In this electoral aftermath, one can despair of democracy, or we can seek to understand its challenges and renew it in a new form where people might discover their will to preserve its vibrancy and relevance. But for that we need a new political imaginary built from the potentials immanent to the everyday practices of solidarity, including the encampments and the protests, the struggle for the unhoused, the movements against prison institutional violence, against the violence at the militarized border, and against genocide and the complicit powers that aid and abet its operations.
In this context, we have every reason to be concerned about attacks on higher education, including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, on intellectual life, and, of course, on open inquiry, a value shared by academic freedom and democratic life. To make good judgments, people have to be able to reap the benefits of open debate. Open debate, based on evidence and argumentative forms, requires education, especially the skills of critical reasoning, working with textual and historical evidence, sorting true from false claims, and thoughtful reflection on the unexamined frameworks in which political judgments take place. Debate inside the classroom is not the same as debate in the public sphere, but they do overlap, implying that learning how to think and evaluate claims in the educational settings makes for more firmly grounded political judgments in the public sphere. That is, at least, the wager. If the university fails in this mission or understands its role as simply to impart skills and to remain “neutral” on matters of shared public concern, it severs its links with democracy and becomes part of the very problem we seek to redress—the erosion of democracy itself and of the vital link between democracy and educational institutions (Dewey 2018, 87–106).
For higher education to teach these practices of analysis, reflection, and open inquiry, certain academic freedoms must first be in place. Faculty have to be free to devise their own curricula, but also to engage in university life in order to participate in decisions regarding educational processes more generally. Academic freedom stipulates that faculty have primary responsibility for the curriculum, what is taught and how, but also to engage in research on topics they deem valuable, to review and hire faculty, and to be consulted on student life, all of which relate to the educational process. Shared governance is a central component of academic freedom. To say responsibility is “shared” means decisions that affect academic life should be made through consultation with faculty and meaningful engagement with their views. In November 2024, the Regents of the University of Michigan were censured by the faculty for failing to consult with, and engage, faculty when they called in the state police to arrest protesters. In addition, they called the state’s district attorney, to whose campaign a regent had donated, without first contacting local police. Proceeding to charge students with criminal acts for exercising expressive rights is but one abrogation of their constitutional rights. Allowing donors to influence university policy on students while bypassing faculty consultation is a clear abrogation of principles of academic freedom.
No matter where we stand on particular issues of the day, we should all stand for these principles—both the constitutional ones and those that belong to academic freedom. Without such principles, there are no protections against illegitimate intervention in, and eventual control of, matters of academic concern by state powers, donors, administrators, corporations, or other external powers.
I just wrote “we should all stand” and so made an assumption that we are each free to say where we stand on issues of the day. But are we truly free in that way? I said “say” where we stand, but I assumed “saying” implies expressive freedoms of various kinds, including signs and banners, acoustics, including chants and drums, even the deployment of existing infrastructure as platforms for messaging. Of course, there are “time and place” considerations, but if those are used to negate expressive freedoms, they have become censorship. And there are questions of property, but if no damage is done, the public grounds of a campus should not be deprived of their public character through recourse to property rights. Can we take any of these abovementioned forms of expressive freedom for granted? How do we understand and defend those freedoms when they are exercised on an academic campus or, indeed, when extramural speech takes place off campus or online?
Some rights, such as speech, affiliation, and assembly, are constitutionally protected in the US, and though constitutional rights are not the same as academic freedom, as I have already suggested, the matter of extramural speech appeals both to a constitutional right and to a basic precept of academic freedom. When institutions of higher education summarily dismiss or suspend faculty on the basis of their political views, they not only violate the precept of shared governance if no due process is provided but also engage in retaliation against faculty for exercising their right to extramural speech. The relation we take to academic freedom, especially the protections afforded extramural speech, have direct implications for how we think about constitutional rights of expression. More than that, however, our very ability to preserve academic freedom has consequences for preserving democracy, especially during times when both are being undermined and dismantled with alarming speed.
Academic freedom is generally understood as a collective right that belongs to faculty members who work in tenure-track or tenured positions in academic institutions. It is guaranteed by conventions adopted by those institutions, which means that when conventions are violated or suspended, academic freedom dissolves as a right. It exists only as long as the conventions by which it is defined remain binding. The doctrines that lay out its precepts cannot guarantee that its principles will be enacted, though the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) retains the power to censure, and being censured casts a bad light on noncompliant institutions—or should. But if institutions can assume the costs of that reputational damage because, say, losing federal funding is a worse loss, or because they see other institutions getting away with the same, then the norm starts to fall apart. If they openly break their commitments to academic freedom in the name of “security” or “property” or “safety” without examining the grounds for those invocations, then they are able to consolidate administrative powers, often with the support of governments and donors and at the expense of faculty rights. The powers of an organization such as the AAUP are further limited when universities contravene their own bylaws and commitments to academic freedom. There is not, and never should be, a police force backing the principles of academic freedom. Once institutions adopt those doctrines, they alone are obligated to make sure these principles remain binding. If they fail to honor their own obligation, they are not penalized in a way they cannot survive. But the consequences of consolidating administrative powers at the expense of both constitutional and academic freedom protections become clear. It is the faculty themselves who are left to defend their own freedoms and to recognize and support the constitutional freedoms of students and staff.
The University of Pennsylvania Chapter AAUP notes the nonbinding power of its own principles and reports: “Academic freedom is only as strong as the institutions, procedures, and professional norms that faculty members established over the last century to protect it” (AAUP-Penn 2024). That seems true, but the weight of history alone does not guarantee its strength; established conventions have to be continually reestablished, enacted repeatedly in order to remain binding. Even if they belong to a revered legacy handed down from the past, that past comes alive in the present as conventions are further specified and rearticulated in light of new circumstances and challenges.
This essay was first published in Social Research: An International Quarterly, a John Hopkins University Press publication, in its Summer 2025 edition. Reprinted with permission.
