Lecture: How Can Universities Navigate the Current Moment
Photo: umass.edu
Source: UMass News and Media
Robert Shibley, special counsel for campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and Hank Reichman, former chair of the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, will present the 2025 College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) Freedman Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Monday, April 14 at 4 p.m. in the Great Hall of Old Chapel. The lecture is free and open to the public. Online registration is suggested.
The conversation will explore the future of higher education and academic freedom in the U.S. under the conversation topic, “How Can Universities Navigate the Current Moment?” It will be moderated by Jamie Rowen, associate professor of legal studies and political science and director of the Center for Justice, Law and Societies at UMass Amherst. The lecturers will discuss universities’ responses to the federal landscape regarding higher education, coalition building, immigration actions against scholars and institutional neutrality.
Shibley began at FIRE straight out of Duke Law School in 2003, with the intention of doing nonprofit work for a couple of years before finding a permanent job. This lasted 19 years, including a half dozen as executive director. Shibley launched FIRE’s first major litigation initiative, traveled to dozens of campuses to speak about First Amendment and Title IX issues, and oversaw FIRE’s expansion into off-campus issues before a stint representing students and faculty members in private practice at the firm of Allen Harris PLLC. He later returned to FIRE in his current role, where he advocates for free speech and due process on college campuses. Shibley is the author of “Twisting Title IX” and is a frequent guest and writer for many national and international media outlets.
Reichman is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, East Bay. He authored “The Future of Academic Freedom,” which won the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award from the American Library Association, and “Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools.” Reichman led the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2012 to 2021. A historian of Russia and modern Europe, he is a graduate of Columbia University and earned a doctorate in history from the University of California, Berkeley.
This year’s lecture is sponsored by the SBS Freedman Lecture Series and co-sponsored by UMass Faculty for Open Inquiry and the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP).
The series is funded by Robert Rosen ’69 and Nancy Rosen ’70, and is named for Nancy’s parents, Max and Ruth Freedman. Initiated in 2016, the Freedman Lecture brings scholars and practitioners to SBS to engage on contemporary societal issues from different vantage points, leaving the audience with a richer appreciation of differing viewpoints and an example of how reasonable people can disagree without being disagreeable. Previous Freedman lectures have focused on immigration, universal basic income and preserving democracy.
More information about the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Freedman Lecture series can be found on the SBS website.