In Defense of Academic Freedom Session 7
The Frontlines of Educator Resistance
Featuring:
Rupa Marya
Isaac Kamola
Moderators:
Anna Feder
Bassam Haddad
Organized by DC, Maryland, & Virginia Faculty for Academic Freedom and Gaza in Conrtext Collaborative Project; Cosponsored by MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights, MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom, Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network (115+ chapters nationally)
Monday, 14 July 2025
1:00 PM EST
The assault on academic freedom is intensifying on University campuses. This series takes note of cases of defamation, intimidation, and suspension that faculty are being subjected to in the United States and beyond. We aim to raise awareness regarding the conditions and pretenses under which such violations occur.
Join academics, activists, and educators to discuss how we organize workers across positions in higher education and K-12 in advance of the school year to push back against the repression at our institutions. We will discuss a variety of tactics, including leveraging internal processes with the support of unions, legal avenues, public pressure campaigns, and boycotts.
This event is Co-Sponsored by the Gaza in Context Collaborative Project
Co-Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies Association’s Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, University of Illinois Chicago’s Arab american cultural Center, George Mason University’s AbuSulayman’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago’s Critical Middle East Studies Working Group, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
Featuring
Rupa Marya is a physician, writer, composer and activist whose work sits at the intersection of climate, health and racial justice. She is the co-author with Raj Patel of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Follow her on Substack @RupaMarya.
Isaac Kamola is an associate professor of political science at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. His research examines the political economy of higher education, critical globalization studies, and African anticolonial theory. He is author of Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War (with Ralph Wilson, 2021) and Making the World Global: US Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary (2019).
Anna Feder (Moderator) spent almost two decades in higher education, the last twelve running the Bright Lights Cinema Series, a free public exhibition program prioritizing social justice cinema at Emerson College in Boston. Her termination and the cancellation of her series are now the subject of a lawsuit that asserts that Emerson infringed on her free speech rights. She is an organizer with Emerson’s FSJP and supported the encampment set up by students.
Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011), Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine, and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute.