When students, staff, or faculty are accused of being associated or "aligned" with terrorist organizations, universities may be pressed to take immediate and harsh action, if only to quell media attention and appear compliant with this lawless Administration’s wishes. Universities must prepare for this possibility, learn about the underlying legal frameworks, and refuse to operate on the basis of fear rather than legal necessity or moral principle.

Last week, Yale University fired Helyeh Doutaghi, from her position as the Deputy Director of the LPE Project. Yale was Helyeh’s employer (and is mine). I was not privy to their negotiations. Her termination was not my decision, and I opposed it. I have known Helyeh as a principled and proud young scholar, far from…

The online targeting and harassment of the LPE Project’s Deputy Director, Helyeh Doutaghi, is part of a broader environment of speech repression, particularly of anti-war and pro-Palestinian views.

An increasing number of universities want to restrict their leaders from speaking about issues of public concern. This push for "neutrality" is a key piece of a broader conservative campaign to suppress speech that conservatives don’t like. It also offers a lesson about what we can expect of powerful institutions in the second Trump era.

The articles, blogs, exit polls, charts, tweets, and skeets that have been helping us make sense of the 2024 election.

Free speech at universities hangs in the balance. But defending it will require much more than just resisting the assaults coming from billionaires and right-wing influencers. It will require reconnecting with the purposes and highest aims of the academy and building a political economy of higher education that can begin to truly deliver on them.