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Does academic freedom have a future?  That's the question AAUP Committee A chair Henry "Hank" Reichman tries to answer in his recent book.  In this talk he will explain why academic freedom today is threatened on multiple fronts and may be imperiled more than at any time since the early years of the AAUP.  Yet Reichman is also hopeful that the faculty can successfully mount resistance.  In this talk he will spell out how to organize against challenges ranging from the erosion of the tenure system -- the single biggest threat to academic freedom -- the rise of "academic capitalism," the improper influence of external donors, and the assault on expertise and knowledge by politically motivated trustees, politicians, and pressure groups.  

Henry Reichman is Chair of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and Chair of the AAUP Foundation.  From 2012 to 2018 he also served as AAUP First Vice-President.  His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, was published in April by Johns Hopkins University Press.  An historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, he is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, East Bay, where he served three terms as chair of the academic senate, and on the CSU system academic senate executive committee as well as for nine years on his faculty union bargaining team.  Reichman was a visiting assistant professor of history at Northwestern in 1979-80.