Academic Freedom as a Practice of Democracy

The AAUP’s Journal on Academic Freedom has just released Volume 17.

This year’s call for papers was inspired, in part, by urban and cultural studies scholar Davarian Baldwin’s rousing call for courage in the face of political and material repression in US colleges and universities: “We are the power that we have been waiting for.” Affirming this declaration, contributions to the 2026 volume showcase the work of higher education community members in fighting back against repression. We feature original scholarly articles grounded in a renewed notion of academic freedom as not only an abstract value or principle to be defended but also a living practice of research, teaching, and public engagement that articulates a democratic higher education and a democratic society.

As a practice, academic freedom is embodied in the free, critical inquiry of students and scholars; in syllabi, curricula, and classrooms whose content is determined by experts rather than by administrators, boards of trustees, external special interest groups, or government agencies; and in the extramural speech and action of students and scholars, which are protected by the First Amendment and by AAUP principles. National and international political discourses and federal investigations—including those pertaining to Palestine, racial and gender diversity, and other “controversial” topics—have pressured administrators to police protected speech and action on campuses, while disregard for shared governance has created conditions of institutionalized disposability and precarity that further threaten the freedoms of academic workers. Under such conditions, the practice of academic freedom—resilient, defiant, and unwaveringly committed to the search for knowledge and to the common good—itself becomes an instantiation of democracy over and against authoritarianism.

You can access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/JAF17 or click on titles in the table of contents below.

Submissions to the call for papers for next year’s volume, “Freedom and Responsibility: Palestine in American and International Higher Education,” are due by March 8, 2027.

—Karim Mattar, Faculty Editor