The Assault on Academic Freedom and the Crisis of Higher Education
This year's OSU 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. His talk is titled "The Assault on Academic Freedom and the Crisis of Higher Education."
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.
In Room 165, OSU Thompson Library.
This event is free, open to the public and welcoming to everyone. Brought to you by the OSU Humanities Institute.
Henry "Hank" Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay. He served as AAUP first vice-president from 2012 to 2018 and as chair of the AAUP Foundation from 2014-2022. From 2012 to 2021 he chaired AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He has served on six AAUP investigating committees, including most recently co-chairing its investigation of academic freedom in Florida, and co-authored numerous AAUP policy statements and reports. He is currently a member of AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance, a co-editor of the AAUP’s Academe blog and president of the AAUP's at-large chapter.
Reichman's book The Future of Academic Freedom was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom, which has been called "the best book on the subject," was also published by JHUP in October 2021; a second expanded edition came out in March 2025. His Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools, was published by the American Library Association in three editions (1988, 1993, 2001).
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3515162-0
