Academic Freedom on Life Support

This latest sit‑down is with journalist Hannah Epstein to unpack a story that sounds like dystopian fiction but is happening on American campuses right now. Her reporting for The Nation begins with a University of Michigan student being confronted by private investigators hired by his own university. From there, Epstein traces a broader pattern of surveillance, intimidation, and administrative pan...

For ScheerPost’s Academic Freedom Project, we are looking to speak with both professors and student journalists covering what’s happening on their campuses and the attacks on the freedoms we hold dear. We understand there is a distinction between academic freedom, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment — but all are vital to a free press and a free campus, where curiosity and inquiry can th...

Welcome to Academic Freedom on Life Support , hosted by Joshua Scheer. In this episode, we speak with Austin Sarat , the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, and one of the first contributors to our project examining the nationwide crisis facing higher education. Sarat argues that “academic freedom in the United States is facing the greatest...

Today on Scheer Intelligence, we pull back the curtain on a crisis unfolding quietly but catastrophically across American higher education. Robert Scheer sits down with Professor Steve Macek — scholar, organizer, and one of the country’s sharpest analysts of academic freedom — to examine what he calls an unprecedented assault on the institutions that produce knowledge itself. From Trump’s weaponiz...