Our Podcast, AAUP Presents

We're podcasting! Check out our podcast, AAUP Presents, where we discuss issues related to academic freedom, shared governance, higher ed, and more. New episodes will be posted here and on other major podcasting platforms as we get listed. Subscribe on your preferred platform so you don't miss any episodes.

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Season 4, Episode 8 (New, September 30, 2024): In this episode we discuss the Nonpartisan College Voter Registration and Education Project, a student voter registration project that aims to increase student voter registration and turnout by asking faculty to devote five minutes of class time to voter education and on-the-spot voter registration.

 

Season 4, Episode 7 (September 20, 2024): In this episode we discuss  academic boycotts and the AAUP's revised policy on boycotts, released this August. We’ll hear more about the statement, how it came about, and where it fits in the current debates about academic freedom in higher education.

 

Season 4, Episode 6 (July 11, 2024): This episode looks at the AAUP’s involvement in the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1950s and 1960s as it related to higher ed. The guest is Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, dean of the graduate school and professor of social and cultural foundations in the College of Education at the University of Washington.

 

Season 4, Episode 5 (May 10, 2024): As campus protests in support of Palestine are met with often violent and repressive crackdowns, we talk to three faculty members, all AAUP members, who report on what's happening at their respective campuses.

 
Season 4, Episode 4 (May 3, 2024): As violent, militarized responses to protests on campuses across the country continue, in this episode we look at how political interference in higher education has expanded in dangerous ways. We discuss how the right (and increasingly the center) have demonized higher education as a public good, and examine the historical origins of the current onslaught of political interference in higher ed.
 

Season 4, Episode 3 (May 3, 2024): In this episode we dive into how data, educational technologies (or “EdTech”), and other technological forces are shaping and sometimes harming higher education. 

 

Season 4, Episode 2 (April 8, 2024)  In this episode we talk to two of the organizers of the National Day of Action for Higher Education to be held on April 17. On that day, faculty and student groups at more than 50 U.S. college and university campuses will hold an a coordinated nationwide counter-offensive against the sustained right-wing assault on American higher education as a public good. 

 

Season 4, Episode 1 (February 28, 2024) In this episode we look at member-led efforts to fight legislative interference in Texas and Ohio, specifically pushing back against bills targeting diversity equity and inclusion programs, tenure, and collective bargaining. We talk about each campaign's successes, failures, and the lessons learned.

 

Season 3, Episode 6, (December 6, 2023) In this episode we discuss the AAUP's special report Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.  The report offers an in-depth review of a pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida, which have largely occurred during the term of Governor Ron DeSantis.

 

 

Season 3, Episode 5 (November 29, 2023) In this episode Michaele Turnage Young, the senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, discusses this summer’s Supreme Court affirmative action decision and talks about how creating equity in higher ed requires reimagining and reexamining what the education system can do to expand access to higher education. 

 

 

Sesson 3, Episode 4 (October 4, 2023) In this episode, we discuss the unprecedented strike earlier this year at Rutgers University with Todd Wolfson, the president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT. Of the strike and their common good model of organizing, he had this to say: “For 50 years, I’d say public universities have been on the defensive.”  Now, he said, “I think we turned the tables and we moved the ball perceptively in the other direction.”

 

Season 3 Episode 3, (October 4, 2023) In this episode we talk to Atia Sattar, an associate professor (teaching) in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California, about the article she wrote for AAUP’s Academe magazine  entitled “Academic Motherhood and the Unrecognized Labors of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Women of Color.”

 

Season 3, Episode 2 (September 17, 2023) in this episode we examine the changing higher ed landscape after the Supreme Court decision in the case Students for Fair Admissions, INC, v. President and Fellows of Harvard College which effectively ended effectively end race-conscious admissions.

 

Season 3, Episode 1 (September 17, 2023)  In this episode we focus on AAUP’s work around racial justice. This is the first in a series of podcasts this season that will examine issues around the fight for greater racial equity in higher education. Tune in to hear our discussion about efforts to restrict teaching about race, the racial equity initiative at the AAUP, and what's ahead.

 

Season 2, Episode 2 (March 2, 2023) We’re returning to the topic of student debt after this week’s arguments before the Supreme Court over the Biden administration’s student debt relief program.  Risa Lieberwitz, AAUP’s general counsel and a professor of labor and employment law in the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Jenna Sablan, AAUP’s senior program officer for government relations, weigh in on what happened at the high court this week and what's next. 

 

Season 2, Episode 1 (February 15, 2023) In this episode we discuss  the AAUP’s new  investigative report on the summary suspension and dismissal of Dr. Mark McPhail, at Indiana University Northwest. The guests are Afshan Jafar, a professor of Sociology at Connecticut College, and the chair of the investigative committee for the report, and Mark Criley, a senior program officer in the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance, who staffed the investigation.  The episode is hosted by Mariah Quinn, AAUP’s digital organizer.

 

Episode 11 (December 21, 2022) In this episode of the Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, and Charlie Eaton, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced, discuss the past, present and future of  the student debt crisis in the United States. It’s a fascinating history that has brought us to a pivotal moment where debt forgiveness and a path to a debt free future seems possible, but remains fraught with political and social barriers.

 

Episode 10 (New, December 21, 2022) In this episode of the podcast we sit down with Professor Lori Latrice Martin, an associate dean in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, to discuss  her article “Black Out: Backlash and Betrayal in the Academy and Beyond,” which examines what Professor Martin describes as the "predictability of efforts to silence conversations and actions related to combating anti-Blackness in America and the continued use of Black deaths to further the social, economic, and political progress of non-Black groups in the academy and beyond" in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

Episode 9 (August 3, 2022) In this episode of the podcast we discuss the issue of the massive transfer of wealth from tribal nations who underwrote the founding of land-grant universities and how institutions are beginning to address and contend with difficult questions about their relationship to Indigenous communities. The guests are Stephen M. Gavazzi, a professor of human development and family science in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University, and John N. Low, an enrolled citizen in the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Indians and the director of the Newark Earthworks Center. 

 

Episode 8  (April 28, 2022) This episode discusses the special committee report Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina System. The report considers the influence of the North Carolina state legislature on the systemwide board of governors and campus boards of trustees. It discusses how political pressure and top-down leadership have obstructed meaningful faculty participation in the UNC system, jeopardized academic freedom, and reinforced institutional racism. The guests are the co-chairs of the special committee that wrote the report, Nicholas Fleisher, professor of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Afshan Jafar, professor of Sociology at Connecticut College. The episode is hosted by Anita Levy, senior program officer in the Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance at the AAUP. 

 

Episode 7 (April 13, 2022): In this episode we discuss AAUP’s recently released statement Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom: Redefinitions of Antisemitism and Racism. The guests are Rana Jaleel, an associate professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and  Risa Lieberwitz, who is AAUP’s general counsel and a professor of labor and employment law in the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She is also a member of Committee A. The episode is hosted by Mariah Quinn, AAUP's digital organizer.

 

Episode 6: The AAUP’s Kelly Benjamin talks to Michele Rayner, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, about attacks on academic freedom, the motivation for anti-critical race theory bills, and the state of the broader political situation in Florida. Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here. 

 

Episode 5: After the University of Florida administration blocked faculty from testifying in a voting rights case, a battle over academic freedom broke out in the state, garnering national attention and a court case.  Paul Ortiz, professor of history at the University of Florida and president of the United Faculty of Florida-UF, talks to host Mariah Quinn about how faculty in the state are geared up to protect academic freedom and the first amendment. Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here.

 

Episode 4: This podcast discusses the student debt crisis, which affects than forty-five million people in the United States who are saddled with debt in excess of $1.7 trillion, and perils and promise of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The guests are Kaitlyn Vitez, Federal Government Relations Specialist, AAUP national office and Jessica Sponsler, art historian and adjunct professor and AAUP’s Pennsylvania state conference president. Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here.

 

 

Episode 3: The last episode of 2021 takes a look at our Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession and the issue of institutional debt, covered in a special section of the report. Guests are Glenn Colby, the senior researcher at the national office of the AAUP, and Eleni Schirmer, a research associate on UCLA’s Initiative for the Future of Finance. Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here. 

 

 
Episode 2: This episode focuses on shared governance in higher ed, featuring a closer look at some of the AAUP's work around shared governance during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Guests are Joerg Tiede, director of research at the AAUP, and Mike DeCesare, a professor of sociology at Merrimack College and a consultant with AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Shared Governance.  Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here. 

 

Episode 1: We're joined on the inaugural podcast by Irene Mulvey, the AAUP’s current president. We'll cover the AAUP's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, current fights to protect academic freedom and shared governance, and plans for a new deal for higher education. Listen below; episode links and ways to share can be found here.