The Academic Freedom Podcast

Featuring Brian Galle, the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Tax Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, an expert on taxation and nonprofits. Galle recently served as a senior fellow in the division of corporation finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He joins us to talk about the proposed tax on university endowments now making its way through Congress. The Republican House Ways & Means Committee issued a press release proclaiming that their bill “holds woke, elite universities that operate like major corporations . . . accountable.” What is the endowment tax and what is its significance for the future of higher education? - 6/11/25

Keith Whittington is joined by Eugene Volokh, the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, among other works, of the textbook, The First Amendment and Related Statutes. On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security announced that Harvard University has lost its certification to participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. As a consequence, international students enrolled at Harvard University will no longer be given student visas. Volokh and Whittington discuss what the administration has done and what constitutional questions it raises.

Keith Whittington interviews Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, whose scholarly interests include free speech, constitutional law, and administrative law. He recently authored a paper, “Our Money or Your Life!' Higher Education and the First Amendment,” available here, which explores the First Amendment constraints of federal funding to American universities. Sunstein helps unpack the legal and constitutional questions raised by the Trump administration's strategy of withholding federal grants from schools like Columbia and Harvard to force internal policy reforms. 

Keith Whittington sits down with Daniel Hemel, professor of law at New York University Law School, with an expertise in taxation, nonprofit organizations, and constitutional law. They discuss the Trump administration's threat to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status and the implications of the tax code for the workings of American universities.

Keith Whittington is joined by David Cole, the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. This episode focuses on the recent “Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia,” of which Professor Cole was a lead author. That statement was published on the website of the New York Review of Books, and was signed by an ideologically diverse group of 18 scholars ranging from Steven Calabresi and Eugene Volokh to Erwin Chemerinsky and Pam Karlan. Keith Whittington also signed the statement. 

The AFA's Keith Whittington sits down with Michael Berube and Jennifer Ruth to discuss their recent book, It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom. Michael is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University. Jennifer is a professor of film at Portland State University. He is the author of such books as What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and Bias in Higher Education, and she is the co-editor of the recent book, The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom. They both served as members of Committee A on academic freedom at the American Association of University Professors.

Keith Whittington sits down with Timothy Zick, the John Marshall Professor of Government and Citizenship at William & Mary Law School and a leading expert on the First Amendment law surrounding protest activities. His first book was Speech Out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places, which was published in 2009. His latest book was published by Cambridge University Press and is Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protests. They discuss the law of public protests in general and the specific situation of protest activities on college campuses.

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Cary Nelson, the Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served for many years in the leadership of the American Association of University Professors, including terms as its president from 2006 to 2012. He is currently chair of a new organization, the Alliance for Academic Freedom, not to be confused with the Academic Freedom Alliance. In addition to his work on American poetry, he is the author of several books on higher education, including Manifesto of a Tenured Radical from 1997 and No University is an Island from 2010. His latest book is the just published Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles.  

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Mitch Daniels, the outgoing president of Purdue University and former Republican Governor of Indiana. During his time at Purdue, President Daniels has carved out a national reputation as a leader on campus free speech issues. Daniels shares the principles and practices he has followed to dramatically improve Purdue's rating as a defender of academic freedom. The university most recently appeared at number three on FIRE's College Free Speech Rankings. 

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law, where he teaches on the First Amendment. Volokh is also the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Whittington and Volokh discuss the recent Georgetown Law controversy involving Ilya Shapiro, and whether universities should take public positions on the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion. They also discussed the Kalven Report, a 1967 report from the University of Chicago on the relationship between academic freedom and the political neutrality of academic institutions.

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Professor David Rabban of the University of Texas Law School, a member of the AFA's Academic Committee and former general counsel for the American Association of University Professors, about the importance of protecting both intramural and extramural speech. Drawing from recent high profile cases in which professors were sanctioned by their employers over statements made on social media and in podcast interviews, Whittington and Rabban explore how the principles of academic freedom apply to faculty both on and off campus, in their lives as scholars and as citizens. 

In this special edition of the Academic Freedom Podcast, Keith Whittington interviews Matthew Finkin of the University of Illinois College of Law about the new proposals from Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to end tenure as we know it at state colleges and universities. In addition to ending tenure for new hires, the proposals would revoke tenure for professors who teach critical race theory and institute annual post-tenure reviews for all. The Academic Freedom Alliance said in a statement that the proposals would “strike at the very heart of the academic enterprise.”   Matthew Finkin is a renowned expert on academic freedom and the author of multiple books, including The Case for Tenure. Listeners can learn more about the importance of tenure in Episode 6 of the Academic Freedom Podcast (published 10/20/21) on Georgia's Post-Tenure Review Policy, and by reading the AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure.

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Dan Cullen, Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes College. Professor Cullen was a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Academic Freedom Task Force on Campus Free Expression, which recently published its report, Campus Free Expression: A New Roadmap. In this wide ranging discussion, Whittington and Cullen cover key findings of the report, how those findings relate to recent controversies, and the most salient takeaways for universities and policymakers. 

In this special edition of the Academic Freedom Podcast, the AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Jeff McMahan, the Sekyra and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, about the current controversy at SUNY Fredonia involving Professor Stephen Kershnar. An applied ethicist and distinguished teaching professor of philosophy, Prof. Kershnar has been placed under administrative review and barred from campus for conducting research and making statements in a YouTube interview about "adult-child sex."  The Academic Freedom Alliance sent a letter to SUNY Fredonia in defense of Prof. Kershnar's academic freedom and partnered with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to draft an open letter from philosophy faculty in support of his right to tackle difficult questions.   In this conversation, Whittington and McMahan explore not only the controversy itself, but also the larger questions surrounding what moral philosophers do, why they ask such controversial questions, and what value they bring to our understanding of society's most difficult issues.

In October 2021, three University of Florida (UF) professors were told by the University's Conflict of Interest Office that they would not be allowed to be expert witnesses in a voting-rights lawsuit against the state, sparking an outcry over academic freedom. In this episode of the Academic Freedom Podcast, the AFA's Keith Whittington interviews two UF professors who were at the center of the faculty Senate's effort to push back on the decision. Raymond Issa is the chair of the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom, which was set up to review the University's decision, and Danaya Wright is a member of the committee. They discuss the findings of the report released by the ad hoc committee in December. 

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Hiram E. Chodosh, president of Claremont McKenna College.  Under President Chodosh's leadership, Claremont McKenna has been widely recognized for its commitment to academic freedom. It was the recipient of the Institutional Excellence Award from the Heterodox Academy in 2019. For the past two years, it was the top ranked school in the free speech rankings by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).  President Chodosh previously served as Dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, where he was also the Hugh B. Brown Endowed Presidential Professor of Law and Senior Presidential Adviser on Global Strategy.

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Howard Gillman, chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. Chancellor Gillman is an award-winning scholar and teacher with an expertise in the American Constitution and the Supreme Court. He holds faculty appointments in the School of Law, the Department of Political Science, the Department of History, and the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and every year teaches an undergraduate seminar. He also provides administrative oversight to, and serves as co-chair of the advisory board of, the University of California's National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

The AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Hank Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University-East Bay, former AAUP vice president, and former chair of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2012 to 2021. Reichman is the author of the recently released book Understanding Academic Freedom from Johns Hopkins University Press.

The AFA's Keith Whittington is joined by Professor Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and Tyler Coward, the Senior Legislative Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Matthew and Tyler join to discuss the new post-tenure review policy from the Georgia Board of Regents, which the AAUP is calling "the death of tenure." For additional information, please see the AAUP's letter objecting to the policy, FIRE's letter to the regents about the policy, and the policy itself (beginning on page 50). 

Keith Whittington interviews Sean Stevens and Komi German, research fellows from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Stevens and German were lead researchers and authors of FIRE's new report and database, "Scholars Under Fire," which includes a list of professors who have been targeted for their speech and features data that provide a broader perspective on threats to campus speech. View the database and learn more at thefire.org/research.

David French is a senior editor of The Dispatch and the author of several books, most recently Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. He was senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, and served as president for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) before stepping down to serve in the Iraq War. David joins the AFA's Keith Whittington for a wide ranging conversation about his work on campus free speech at FIRE, cancel culture on the right vs. the left, his recent involvement in the critical race theory debate, and the unintended consequences of any effort to ban conversations or ideas.  

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a contributing editor of The Atlantic, and the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. He joins the AFA's Keith Whittington for a conversation on the past and future of free speech, the erosion of trust in institutions, and how to strengthen academic freedom going forward. 

A discussion about modern liberal approaches to free speech on campuses. The conversation is hosted by Amna Khalid, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton College, and features AFA members Randall Kennedy and Jonathan Zimmerman. Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School and the author of several books, most recently For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law. Zimmerman is Professor of History of Education and the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of several books, including his most recent, Free Speech: And Why You Should Give a Damn.

A discussion on the landmark ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University, which is redefining the relationship between classroom teaching, academic freedom, and the First Amendment. Featuring Jonathan Adler, Professor of law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law; Jeannie Suk Gersen, Professor of law at Harvard Law School; and Steve Sanders, Professor of law at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University.