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The Future of Higher Education

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Hello and good evening. I'm Josh

Brunberg, president of the CUTUNI

Graduate Center, and it's my pleasure to

welcome you to tonight's timely

discussion of the future of higher

education. And yes, it does have a

future. We are honored to host this

event at such a pivotal moment. Higher

education faces pressures few of us

could have imagined even months ago when

this event was first planned. That's why

it's so important to bring together

experienced leaders and proven

innovators to help envision a pathway

forward. The Graduate Center is a

fitting venue for a conversation of this

depth. Founded over 60 years ago, we are

the only research intensive public

graduate school in New York City. We are

proud to be one of the 25 campuses of

the City University of New York, the

nation's largest urban public

university. We offer most of the

doctoral degrees within the City

University system, 31 in total in the

alphabetical in the academic uh alphabet

of biochemistry to urban education with

an 18 master's degrees from astrophysics

to women and gender studies. Our

graduate students annually teach over

120,000 CUTUNI undergraduates, bringing

the latest from their seminars and

laboratories directly to the classrooms

through public programs such as the one

you will experience tonight. We take

pride in sharing the latest results,

advances, and ideas of our faculty,

staff, and students with the public that

supports us and that we are embedded

within. The graduate center is to be is

the proud home of the futures initiative

which we'll be celebrating tonight. For

just over a decade, the initiative has

been a leader in advancing equity and

innovation in research, teaching, and in

public service in higher education.

Tonight, we're not only hosting a

thought-provoking conversation, we're

also celebrating the 10th anniversary of

the Futures Initiative and the

remarkable accompl accomplishments and

vision of its founder, distinguished

professor Kathy Davidson.

[Applause]

I'm proud to celebrate the enormous comp

contributions that Kathy has made to our

university and to higher education in

our country. Thank you Kathy for your

vision, your passion, and for all the

work that you and your colleagues at the

future initiative have done to advocate

for greater equity and propel changes in

higher education. Kathy, as you may

know, is preparing to retire from her

CUTUNI roles, which has been many,

including as a special adviser to the

chancellor on transformation these past

few years. She has truly left her mark.

Congratulate Congratulations also to

incoming director of the futures

initiative, Professor Shelley Eversley

and and somewhere in the crowd,

executive director Adasha

Oyo. A and special thanks to the diverse

community of doctoral students,

post-graduate researchers, faculty, and

most of all the students who have been

part of the futures initiative's mission

of breaking down educational, social,

and economic barriers and promoting

investment in higher education as a

public good. That is what this year's

anniversary events have all been about.

conversations about the future of

learning, of research, of the planet,

and tonight's culmin culminating panel

on the future of higher education.

Nobody ever accused the futures

initiative of thinking

small. I will leave the introductions to

Shelley, but I do want to welcome our

distinguished visiting panelists,

Shelley Lowe, Maurice Wallace, welcome

home, one of my predecessors, Bill

Kelly, and thanks to my colleague, Nancy

Caner, for all participating tonight.

I'm looking forward to what I'm sure

will be a critical and provocative

discussion of the way forward at a time

when all of us in higher education are

facing so many challenges and newfound

threats to our mission. It's my honor to

turn things over to

[Applause]

Shelley. Good evening everyone. Um it is

really great to be here and thank you

president Brumberg and thank you to the

futures initiative team the fellows the

staff executive director Adashma Dr.

Adashma Oo for all of this behind

thescenes work that um put this

together. I'd like to say hello to

everyone who's um logged in. We have

over 500 RSVPs who are watching this

streaming this now and um we're going to

get started. Um it's really wonderful to

be here with you all right now. Um you

can see their titles here. Um these

distinguished leaders and we will get

right into it. Um with President Nancy

Caner, with the incredible Kathy I was

going to say F.Davidson. Kathy N.

Davidson,

um, William E. Kelly, he lets me call

him Bill now. Um, Shelley Lowe, and

Maurice Wallace, thank you so much for

coming today. Um, to the members of the

audience, please note that um, you

should have received um, some cards,

note cards, and maybe a pencil. Um, we

will accept your questions. So please

write down your questions as they come

to you and somewhere as we proceed

ushers will collect them and if you

could especially all of you with PhDs

you know who you are please write

neatly you can use all caps because I

have to read your questions. Um so thank

you for that and we will just jump right

in. I have notes. None of us needs to be

reminded of course about the extreme

pressures facing higher education today.

Not only because of the defunding of

public education that was really moving

in full force since the 1980s, but also

within the last few months the defunding

of public institutions like the National

Endowment for the Humanities, the

National Science of Found National

Science Foundation, the National

Institutes of Health, plus libraries,

museums, cultural and historical centers

all across the United States. While some

of these institutions have powerfully

and

collectively responded to these

pressures, others have capitulated in a

way that is shameful for anyone who's

thinking about higher education for the

public good. We know this. We all know

this. And one of the reasons why we're

here in this room is because we are well

aware of the pressures facing us today.

Um, and so what we thought we'd do with

the futures initiative is thinking about

the future. thinking about the ways that

we can build and grow and create a

future.

So, let's use this time, this

conversation today to model a way

forward. And here I'm thinking of

something Shelley Lo said to me earlier

today to think about the endurances, to

think about the future, not just for us,

but for the people who will be around

when we're gone, for the people 30 years

from now, 50 years from now. What will

we do today that will help ensure

opportunities for the public good, for

learning, thinking critically, for the

arts, for science, for research? What

are we going to do today that will

inspire and help the future endure in a

way that we are so deeply committed? Um

we have such an incredible brain chest

with us today. Um with these incredibly

distinguished institutional leaders,

people who have committed their careers,

their intellects, all of their powerful

minds to public higher education and

higher education in general. And so

let's use their minds and when you're

thinking about let's let's take this

opportunity to um get into it so we can

build and create something that will

make us all really really proud. So this

is my first question for everyone and

that is we all know there has been a

longstanding hostility towards arts and

the humanities and now the sciences from

climate change to vaccines are the brunt

of this critique. Why? How? What are

some of the ways that all of the

disciplines can work together to defend

and fight for the importance of

knowledge, research, and critical

understanding? I'm also here thinking

about institutes, institutions like the

National Endowment for the Humanities.

What are we going to do? NIH, NEA. Um,

so here's the question.

What are some of the ways that all the

disciplines can work together to defend

and fight for the importance of

knowledge, research, and critical

understanding? Um, I'm thinking about

this too because the futures initiative

um has had for the past 10 years a

series of public lectures called the

university worth fighting for. And so

another way to think about this question

is what is the university that we are

fighting for?

I will start with you, President Caner.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having

me here today.

Um, so I think the first thing we have

to do is step back and say, who are we

working with when we think about the

sciences, the arts, and humanities?

We need to be working with people on the

ground in our communities to make it

clear that in fact the arts and

humanities are critical to human health,

to well-being, to the success of their

children, to the ability of people to

thrive. That's all very good and

general. But when you get on the ground,

for example, I always point to the

humanities action lab, they take

students and faculty and

storytellers through the communities to

talk about climates of inequality, to do

science on the ground, to think about

how flood resistance is going to be so

critical in New York City.

We have phenomenal carc mappings at

Hunter. They need to be out with the

people. We need to create a two-way

street, what I like to call a community

of experts with and without

pedigree who really

co-produce those solutions.

When you go out on the ground in

community, nobody thinks higher ed is

some thing you could get rid

of. This whole notion that the public

doesn't like higher ed. Nobody's talking

to the

public.

Kathy, I recently heard an interview

with the head of Uber who said that he

learned two things in college. how to be

a good business person and how to tell

stories. And I thought that was

fascinating because uh I think one of

the things that we have to do in higher

education is really work on our

storytelling. And needless to say, we've

got an audience of here here who is here

because they're interested in higher ed.

So we all have to tell that story. But I

agree with you completely. When people

talk about how there's people have lost

faith in higher ed, uh they're rarely

talking about their own children, right?

They're working very very hard to make

sure their own kids are going to

college. And we know we have all the

statistics.

Uh salary improves, health outcomes

improved, marital status improves, colon

cancer. I mean, there all of these

things people have cor correlated with

living a healthier lifestyle, being

fortunate enough to have a job that you

care about. Um our students at CUNI

don't have to be told about the

importance of higher education. They're

often the pe the our students are often

the people from their family who are the

first person to go to college and

they're often supporting not only

themselves while they're going to

college but helping their families be

supported. They're the most optimistic

and positive people I know when it comes

to higher education. I think we need to

send our students out into the world um

to talk about not only the importance of

higher education but how things are

related. Um, I I can't think of any

important issue that isn't some

combination of technology, concern about

technology, privacy, surveillance, um,

concern about how you portray that, that

storytelling, art, all of those things

and the science of it. Those are all

connected in life. And in fact, it's

school that sets those into subjects.

It's life. It is how we live our lives.

And we can tell that story, and we need

to tell that story passionately and over

and over again. Thank you, Kathy.

Thinking about this, the people, Nancy,

the idea that we learn inside and

outside of the classroom. And Kathy, the

idea that storytelling as is as

important as science. And I'm thinking

about this in terms of the university

worth fighting for. And I'm looking at

you, Bill Kelly. I get to call him

Bill. I'm thinking about I know everyone

calls him Bill, but I feel very special

nonetheless. I'm thinking about you,

Bill Kelly. um having um served as a

president of a university and also

director of a research library, what is

it that we're fighting for? Yeah, that's

a that's a great question, Shelley, and

I'll build on both uh Nancy

and excuse me, Kathy's responses,

perhaps a somewhat darker tone, but

building on what they had to say. This

is a kind of ratio sha Tom Purdue

evening for me. 25 years ago I mean it's

horrifying to think that on this stage I

had a public conversation with Jim

Dudert, one of uh predecessors uh and

good friend of many of us on on this

stage. Jim had recently retired after a

distinguished career at the University

of Michigan and he was involved in the

Millennial Project that Vortan Gregorian

was writing and he was talking about,

yep, you guessed it, the future of

public higher education and he and I

talked for about an hour and a half uh

that evening. It was a remarkable

conversation and I asked him some

version of the question Shelley just

asked us. I mean, what is what are we

defending? what is the nature of the

university? What are the biggest

challenges? What would you change after

your long and distinguished career? And

Jim immediately said, "Look, I would

like to rebuild the relationship between

the University of Michigan or all public

universities and the funding

constituencies." By that he meant talk

taxpayers in the state of Michigan. He

felt that that connection which had been

born in 1862 with the Morell act and the

land grant had been severed to some

extent and that what Jim said was that

everything we want to do and all of the

challenges we want to meet depend upon

allies. Allies who understand the

importance of what we do of what our

contributions to their lives to their

children's lives. And then he ticked off

a lot of problems under the general

subsuming category of demography is

destiny. And he talked about aging

populations particularly in the upper

Midwest. He talked about demands for tax

relief, for security, for housing, for

fear about uh social security

disappearance, social safety nets. and

he said, "How do we persuade them

because many of them are aging and their

children are not in college at this

point. How do we persuade them of how

important the University of Michigan is

and why they should support it beyond

the question of football teams?" And

what he said was it's very simple. We

need to make ourselves indispensable.

And for me that has been the kind of

north star in what I've done worked the

work that I've been fortunate enough to

do at CUNI at the New York public

library at the Guggenheim Foundation

whatever that for people to care they

have to see you as indispensable in

their lives and that is the challenge

that we confront sometimes easier

sometimes easier buried on discipline

but it's a challenge for all of us

thanks Bill.

Hi, Shelly.

This has been a fun day.

has. Do you want me to answer the same

question? Well, I I can actually refine

this question, especially as I'm looking

at you and Maurice Wallace. Hi, Maurice.

Call me Maurice. Yes.

And I was thinking about something that

Bill just said. and Bill just said

allies. And there's this great book by

Jodie Dean called Comrade. I don't know

if anyone's ever read it. I think she's

a political scientist or a political

theorist. And in her book, Comrade, she

makes this distinction between allies

and comrades. And she argues that, I

hope I don't mangle this, and I'm

certainly simplifying this, but she

argues that allies kind of stick with

you when it's convenient and

comfortable. And then comrades hang with

you when it's hard and they fight with

you when it's

necessary. Um, and they're willing to

risk with you because you're their

comrade. Um, not just an ally, an easy

friend. And I wonder when we're thinking

about universities worth fighting for,

institutions worth fighting for, and I

know you're fighting for something, not

defending, but fighting for something.

If we're thinking about the future, how

do you think about this distinction

between allies and comrades? And most

importantly, here's my

question. Do you think, they told me, by

the way, everyone in this room, um, we

had a premeating and I said, "Is there

anything I'm not supposed to ask? Am I

supposed to be gentle?" And they all

said, "No, ask us anything." So, here I

go.

Do you think there's a crisis of

confidence or a crisis of better word

courage for institutional leaders today

so that they're maybe are showing

themselves to be allies and not

comrades? Or do you think that we have

comrades? And if we do, where do we find

them? And how do we fight with them?

You want to go first?

Should we be allies or comrades?

Well, okay. We'll be comrades. So, as

comrades, you know, one of the things

I'd have to come back and say first is

we talk to our allies differently than

we talk to our comrades, right? We use

different language very often, different

words. We might joke differently with a

comrade than we will with an ally. And

that means we're not quite sharing all

of the information with our allies the

way that we will with a comrade to make

them be on our side, right? And to

really support the work that we're

trying to do. And I think that it's

going to come down very often to

communication. So I have agreed with

everything that's been said so far. We

have a problem communicating to the

public about what is happening. And is

that about courage? Is that about saying

I'm not standing up for what's

happening? Or is it about just not

having the ability and the knowledge to

be able to do it? So I think we we often

have to think this is an all hands- on

deck moment, especially in higher

education. Do not think that this is not

that moment. It is that moment.

Everybody needs to be talking to each

other. Everybody needs to be making

comrades with each other because we have

to move forward in this together. And

when we move forward in this together,

we have to have the public on our side.

When someone says NEH has cut funding to

over a thousand grants, right, a number

of them in higher education

institutions, what does the public

think? They have no idea what those

grants are. They don't know what that

money went for. They don't know how that

impacts them. Why is that? That's our

fault. We haven't told them. We haven't

shown them what that work is and how

important it is and how it affects them

in their everyday lives, right? We are

not treating them as either allies or

comrades. And I think that that's one of

the things that we always have to be

thinking about. What does the public

know about what we do and about the

impacts of this? So, do I think that

it's a lack of courage? I think that

I'll go back to endurance, Shelley.

Sometimes endurance means thinking about

the long road and how long it's going to

take to get there. And you're going to

have to go slow and you're going to have

to go easy to make sure you can get

there. And sometimes you really have to

step it up. You have to jump over

whatever hurdle that is and you have to

be as loud about it as possible. But I

think we all have to assess for

ourselves within your institution,

within your communities, within your

state. At what point are you at and

where can you do the best thinking about

endurance as the long run? Right.

Thanks. Thank you,

comrade. That was marvelous. Um I I

don't know that I can say it any better.

Um, I I might add, however, that in my

own imagination,

uh, one of the distinctions between the

ally and the comrade is that the comrade

signs up to be accountable. And

accountability, I think, is a thing that

we just don't always expect from an

ally. An ally might well be an uh you

know an affective relationship, but um

when the going gets tough, right?

Um you don't want to have to look for

your help. The comrade is already there.

Um the comrade is called to this labor

in the same way that we're all called to

this labor. Um and I guess I also want

to say that um it may be that we have

not been um comrade enough to the

communities we have. So we seem to have

trouble engaging and it's not just the

university itself but the university has

a I think a responsibility

to understand that the community is not

them out

there but the institution is also a part

of the community and the community is

also a part of the institution. I mean

the staff, the faculty, the leadership

that makes the university go

um we aren't only we don't live our

lives entirely in a a kind of academic

vacuum, nor do any of the people who

labor diligently um at a university. And

so I want I want to try to imagine what

it looks like for a university to talk

about us and not mean

only those who have who occupy space on

a campus.

I want to know what it looks like for an

institution to refer to us and have in

mind um not only um uh academic leaders,

academic workers, academic laborers and

support staff, but to um think about a

broader audience, the audience that um a

public

lecture should invite.

And I hope that this institution

continues to offer the annual public

lecture and be very serious about what

it means

to invite audiences to a public lecture

and make it easy enough for that public

to attend those lectures. to to

advertise public lectures in such a way

that the public is

interested in and engages uh maybe not

even just interested in but but uses

platforms

where the public

um finds itself, where the public sphere

is talking. Um, yeah. And I guess the

last thing I'll say, u, cuz I know we're

supposed to be short here and it's

that's sometimes hard for me.

Um, I want to I want to suggest that,

um, um, Bill, if I may. Um, is is is

he's my friend. You can call him Bill.

Okay. Okay.

Thanks, Bill.

I think he's absolutely right to say

that the university has to demonstrate

that it is

indispensable. But I want to suggest

that academic workers have to also um

demonstrate how we can be irresistible.

There's a certain passion, a certain

power, a certain energy, a certain force

that uh Kathy Davidson modeled for me

many many moons ago now. Um, I was her

student at one point and tonight just in

her comments she reminded me by her by

the content of them, by her manner, by

her

thoughtfulness of how excited and

enthusiastic

um her

modeling of an academic life, the life

of the mind, how inspiring it was for

me. And I just want to offer um that her

model is something I'm always trying to

pay forward to my students and to the

community that exceeds the campus

wherever I have an opportunity to engage

them. So thank you Kathy. Thanks Kathy.

To just say one personal comment really

quick. I look out and I see former

students, former colleagues, current

colleagues, current students, family

who've come from all different parts of

the United States to be here. It's

extremely moving. And I'm going to now

stop that because I got a show to put

on. Maurice, I wanted to pick up on your

point about how we're part of the

community. And I want to refer to a

class that Bill and I co-taught in 2015

called the future of higher education

where we chose 15 students. They had to

be in 15 disciplines from computer

science to art. Um they were all

graduate students and the other

requirement is they had to that semester

be teaching an undergraduate class at

one of the uh CUTUNI undergraduate

campuses. And we would this we the first

day of class we walked and we said, "Hi,

I'm Kathy Davidson. I'm Bill Kelly.

We're going to leave now. You're going

to make a class for us. We're coming

back in 45 minutes and you 15 people

from 15 fields who've never met each

other before, all graduate students, are

going to design a class." They were

like, "What?" We went away. We came back

after 45 minutes and the students were

like, "Go away. Go away. We're not

through yet." And they had designed a

class. But one of the things we did is

each week somebody would have some new

educational experiment that we would all

read the theory about. And that week

they would go try it out on their

undergraduates and get feedback from

their undergraduates.

We also put on an insane project at the

end where every one of the

undergraduates brought family from all

of those schools to the graduate center

and we had a showcase of work done by

the undergraduates. And a project I'll

never forget and this goes to your pro

to your point was one of our students

was teaching at Brooklyn College and

there was a Kahindi WY exhibit at the

Brooklyn Museum of Art and she said that

she would give an A to any students that

could find five students of her unique

students at Brooklyn College. Find five

students, five people who had never been

to a museum and bring them to the

museum. Brooklyn Museum of Art let

everybody come in free. These students

put up placards all over Brooklyn in

Korean, in Japanese, in Mandarin, in

Spanish, in Russian and said, "We these

students are going to be your dosent."

And these students were dosent for these

community members who came by the

hundreds. And of course, the most

wonderful students who were there were

the granny's who felt so proud that

their grandchildren were taking them on

tours of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It

was amazing and that was one of the most

remarkable experiences. It surely was

and it goes to the point that I continue

to make in these difficult times. The

work needs to become visible. I mean, we

all understand the value of the work,

but the work needs to be visible.

Kathy's example is a good one. There are

hundred others that I'm sure each of you

can think about. But it's not sufficient

just to do the work. It's essential to

also make it visible. to your point

about comrades.

Can I take that one step further? I

believe we have to create what I call

third spaces. Spaces that are not owned

by us or owned by the community. Spaces

where we create together.

In Newark, we created what we called

Express Newark, 50,000 square feet in

downtown Newark of a university

community arts collaboratory for

storytelling for the newest Americans.

Wonderful. That kind of thing is

revolutionary for getting out the

word of what we really are. So, it's not

just a sort of one and done. We have a

grant we're going in. It's a constant

cocreation

in the community. We have not done a

terrific job in in doing but

universities can be anchor institutions.

We are in and of our community

if we take that seriously. And we have

to take it seriously. This morning I got

an email from the president of Princeton

University, not a place noted for its

history of social activism, but it the

I'm Bill by the way.

Uh the the subject line was stand up for

Princeton. And in decades, I had never

heard any such thing from that

university. And instead this was a list

of representatives, of senators, of

council people. This is why endowments

shouldn't be taxed. This is why tax

exemption status should be preserved.

You know, bullet points very beautifully

done. And the argument was that every

week this newsletter would appear in my

mailbox. And you know, the very

different institution than what we're

talking about, but the point I think is

valid. constantly, not just randomly at

a lecture, but constantly reminding what

the value is in building this allyship

that Nancy was just talking about.

You know, on that note, two things. One,

big shout out to the graduate cent's

public programs. They do this all the

time. Um, we do this all the time. And

thank you all for coming and for staying

on their mailing lists and for reaching

out and making time in your day to be

part of this conversation. I'll also

remind you that you can write your

questions down on a note card as neatly

as possible and ushers will collect them

and so you can get in on this

conversation. Um yeah, so getting back

to it, you know, I've got this list. Um

and I kind of feel like the graduate

students in this room and the faculty

people in this room or the people who

are aspiring to be faculty people in

this room have a burning question

about academic freedom.

So, I'm just going to ask it now before

we get we get caught up because there's

all kinds of directions I could go. Um,

and thinking about what we're what you

were saying before, I love the idea of

of connecting with the communities and

and it I could have pivoted this to say

black and black black and Latinx studies

for instance, ethnic studies, women's

studies, um, uh, gender studies, um,

that have a real kind of commitment to

community engagement, community engaged

teaching and learning as part of the

practice of those. And so we'll come

back, I'm going to circle back to that

question. Um but for now because we

still have time-ish

um I wanted to ask the big question

about academic freedom which has always

defined higher education. It is so

essential to critical thinking and to

the creation of new knowledges. Um how

are you thinking about academic freedom

right now and what is your advice for us

as we see it under threat?

Go ahead President Caner. question.

Well, we can go down the line. You all

don't have to answer it, but under

threat. That was the point there.

So, yeah. Do you have any advice for us?

How do we how do we protect it? How will

we in help it endure um for the future?

How are we how are you thinking about

it? What's your advice to the person say

like me who's on the the the schedule

next semester to teach critical race

theory? I teach climate justice. I teach

all the words that are now bad words.

Um, and I write all the things that, you

know, as soon as my book comes out could

get banned, you know,

like. So, I want to begin and end

perhaps by saying what I think it's

not. What I can't stand

honestly is this whole notion of

institutional neutrality.

And I think that is completely

contradictory

to academic freedom. Yeah.

That what is academic freedom? It's our

ability to

have the whole diasporic world at our

table. It's our ability to take a

critical

lens to those issues.

We can't pretend, certainly at CUNI, we

can't

pretend that those global issues that

are resting with our homes, with our

students, with our communities, with our

faculty and staff are things that we can

be neutral about.

Now having said that what I also don't

like is when we jump immediately to this

intellectual

diversity or balance so that we can't

talk about we can't take a critical lens

to settler colonialism or apartheid

genocide because we're not bringing

the balance to the table.

I'm just getting out there. I'll

probably be fired for this,

but so be it. Um, thank you, comrade.

Yeah, right, comrades. I don't know.

But but I really I mean as I'll stop but

I really do feel passionately about the

fact that we get drawn into this cycle

of saying if we have this perspective

we're analyzing we have to have the

opposite perspective we're analyzing.

That's not the way you do interrogation

of ideas.

You don't do that by

saying, "Well, that could be true, but

this could be true." You interrogate an

idea. And that's what the core of

academic freedom has always been

about, taking a critical lens. It's what

Bill Bowen ideas. I'm sorry, Nancy. No,

please.

Just quickly, the distinction that Nancy

is so correctly drawing was described.

Again, I seem to be the village Gregio

recalling ancient history, but it was

described than me. Your turn next. But

he described that distinction as a

difference between institutional

neutrality and institutional restraint.

that the institution had an obligation

to create a platform for discourse and

judgment, but it couldn't simply re

abandon its responsibility to do the

kind of interrogation you're talking. We

do have a responsibility to create safe

spaces

for that interrogation. That's your job.

And that's really hard and we have to

face it that that's really hard. But

that doesn't mean we run away from it by

being neutral. No. or on something like

academic freedom which is absolutely an

existential issue for universities. It's

not simply enough to say we're providing

a platform. We are providing an

opportunity to speak to the core values

of the institution. Exactly.

Maurice,

I have been um thinking about this and

um in the context of um the the pursuit

of knowledge in black studies that I'm

so much a part of these days. And um I

was reminded or reminded myself that one

of the most curious representations or

invocations of academic freedom is in

Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from a

Birmingham jail. He uses that phrase

academic freedom and it seems almost to

come from nowhere except he's he

references academic freedom in the

context of civil

disobedience and he understands Socrates

to have exercised civil disobedience to

help realize the idea of academic

freedom. And so I want to imagine that

what academic freedom might

uh might look like, feel like, seem like

under the present

circumstances is a practice of civil

disobedience which also means

that it costs or could cost. And I think

if there is advice to be given, it is

the sobering advice

that comrades know, allies may know, may

not know. And that

is academic freedom. The insistence upon

academic freedom, the practice of

academic freedom may cost us

something. And the question is, will we

still

stand? Um, which is both advice and a

challenge to us all, I think.

And right, it's about endurance, right?

And I'm going to go to Thank you,

comrade. Um,

I want to ask when did we have academic

freedom at its highest and most open and

supported um era, right? When when did

we see that? When did we feel that? When

did you feel like in in universities

that that was supported and you could do

it? Right? So then I go back to

something one of my colleagues says

constantly, elections have

consequences, right? If we really want

academic freedom, if we want to support

academic freedom and the ability to

really crit critique something and to

have these open

conversations, what are we doing to

ensure that we are making democracy

front and center, that we know that we

are supporting voting, that we know that

we are informing the public about how

this plays a role, how everything

intertwines together. I mean, Kathy and

I were on the National Council for the

Humanities together. You know, I started

under um Obama. She was on already and

and then she left me and under Trump.

But we could see the shift in how you

could do and fund research in

universities between who's elected,

right? So we have to really ask

ourselves when does it look good and how

do we ensure that we kind of try to get

to that point to make it look good again

or make it accessible again support it

again

and to just drive home the point that

we've been making and then I'm going to

turn it and talk about something

optimistic but the negative part is when

you have people denying the science of

vaccines

um the science of epidemiology ology uh

books being banned, slavery not allowed

in textbooks in in many states. Um one

of our colleagues um from uh one of the

Midwestern states, I'm a Chicago, no no

slur intended here, has a list of words

that she can be fired for if she uses.

And those words include things like

social

justice, woman but not feminist or

female or woman but not man, black in

certain situations. I mean that's not

those are not neutral issues. I mean if

that's not academic freedom to say there

there are things that are true and real

and important and worth fighting for.

Then why bother having universities? Why

bother having education? My positive

thing and I don't know is Leah Barlo

here. She was saying that she might be.

I don't think I I don't see her. This is

a woman who teaches at North Carolina

Agricultural and Technical College, uh,

one of the historically black colleges

and universities. She taught

introduction to African-American studies

in the fall to 35 students and thought

she'd do something cool and put her

syllabus up on tip Tik

Tok. 35 students. It was a great class.

She did the same thing on January 20th,

2025. Martin Luther King Day,

inauguration day. She put her syllabus

on. She made a little gave a mini

lecture. She left. She came back and a

million people had joined up for her

class. All right. Suddenly 18 other

professors at historically black

colleges said, "I want to be part of

this, too. My class is open for free.

They've banned black studies at

universities. They're saying slavery

doesn't exist in my

state." It does exist. We're going to

make this free to anybody who wants to

right now. Not right now. That's that's

the negative story. 4.5 million people

signed up to these 18. There are

advisors, there are counselors, they

call themselves Hillman Talk University.

If anyone is old enough to remember a

different world from the 80s, the Cosby

kids all went to Hillman University. So,

it's a totally madeup university that

people are going to. However, Tik Tok is

proprietary and surveillance and now

they're shadow shadowbanning the

professors who teach it. So, it's the

numbers have gone way way down because

it's hard to even get to those. But the

idea that I'm trying to make

is there are many ways to be resilient.

There are many ways to be comrades and

there's many ways to say no, no, no, we

fight for truth and we fight for things

that are real and we need to know those

things. And even if you try to take away

our courses and our programs, we're

going to find other ways of delivering

those things. And that again is about

the public. You know, to be part of

Hillman University, you just have to be

on TikTok. You don't have to have a

university degree. You don't have to

have pay tuition. It's there. And there

are many I love it that there are more

and more things happening like that all

over the country. I've heard the

Colombia law dean who was fired is

teaching her class on civil rights and

law um as a free class out in parks

around New York now. And you know so

there are ways to resist. What was the

word you used Shel? Endure. Endure.

There are ways to endure

uh and there are ways to still defend

what the university is is is fighting

for. You know, can I just can I just

quickly underscore um um from what I

hear Kathy say saying is that even under

the constraints we um are justified to

lament and resist um we also now have an

opportunity I think and um I think

what's essential for taking fullest

advantage of the opportunity that we

have a kind of uh you know not an

opportunity we have looked for or

desired, but an opportunity nonetheless.

I think what might be necessary for us

to uh for us to take fullest advantage

of it is just imagination. That's what I

hear Kathy talking about. A kind of

institutional or institutionalized

imagination and understanding that

perhaps the the uh that might be one of

our greatest forces for good um in this

moment is the imagination to think

beyond the constraints that are imposed

upon us.

It's it's consistent with the history,

as you know, of American public higher

education in which crises were never

wasted. Whether it was the Morell Act

during the Civil War, whether it was the

challenge to Stanford University in

1900, the firing the uh economist who

challenged Stanford's railroad policies.

All of these things generating other

kinds of universities that Kathy has has

written about. It has to do with the

Second World War in Vanover Bush and the

NSF. It has to do with the resounding

response to McCarthyism. These are

darker times. McCarthy was just a

senator, not a president. But in these

times of crisis, as Maurice just said,

resilience, endurance, uh, and

imagination come to the four. And if

there is a silver lining, it is that

this is an opportunity not to waste.

Yeah. And I do want to say quickly,

Shel, this is exactly what I said when

they invited me to this panel and I was

like, I'm so excited about this moment

because we have the opportunity to

change it and it's needed to be changed

for a very long time. And it's time that

we speak up and we say, guess what? We

can do this now and let's do it, right?

Let's let's get together and let's

figure this out and do it. Change it.

Have big ideas. This is so great. I'm

really excited, too. Um I'm excited

because one of the things that um that

the futures initiative has got me

thinking about is innovation and equity,

advancing innovation and equity in

higher ed. And when we think about it in

black studies, in women's studies, in

gender studies, in humanities, in

interdisciplinary studies, we're always

and everyone in the room who's ever

taught a class, right? We're always

thinking about the multiple ways that

people learn. We're always thinking

about um empowering and inspiring

students and one of those ways of doing

that is being adaptable. So like like

Hillman talk for instance or the ways in

which so many people are really thinking

about the way that they teach that

centers their students and they use

multiple modes, right? It's not just

about the textbook, it's about the poem.

It's about the video. It's about the

song, the speech, the performance. Um,

then all of those things come together

to connect with the community as you

were describing it first, uh, Nancy. And

then when I'm thinking about black

studies, connecting the communities, and

I say this because of course that's

that's where, um, I come from. We have I

have the questions here, some questions

from the audience. Um, and I think we

have a little bit of time, so I'm going

to slip this one question in. Um, what

happens when funding is tied to

politics? Do you think there's a way

out? Didn't mean to abruptly change it.

How about if I um how about if I put

this in context? Of course, we're

talking about this. We're talking about

building, right? And and certainly a

university like the City University of

New York always has to be agile because

it's always dealing with a limited

budget. And there is a certain

creativity and imagination. You know,

when I think about my ancestors who were

slaves, enslaved my ancestors. You can

see it all over my face. This is the

face of a person whose ancestors were

enslaved. And my ancestors had to

imagine freedom

before they could achieve it. And one

thing I love about the face that I carry

that I inherited from my ancestors is

also um to remember that we have to

imagine that the impossible is possible.

And the only way we can achieve the

impossible is with the imagination. We

have to think creatively,

adaptively, and in a way that we see

something that does not yet exist. If

that makes sense to you, we have to see

freedom in our

minds before we can imagine it in our

reality, before we can create it in our

in our reality. And I think um like

Shelley said, this is a moment when we

make things, when we imagine and build

something, maybe from a ruin, maybe from

an outdated system, maybe from the

challenges that are in our contemporary

moment. We have to think big creatively

with imagination and try to do something

um with it so that we can endure for the

future. Um yes go. This is great. Um and

then I'm going to ask this question.

We also have to think collaboratively.

Yes. Higher education has been a

ridiculous competitive ecosystem.

Yes. And that's a big problem now. We're

not if we're going to if funding is

going to be tied to politics, we have to

be tied to each other and we have to be

doing things

together. We cannot be an isolated

institution

competing for that money that is tied to

politics. We have to have alliances and

that's what we're doing now.

I love it. I co-chair a national

alliance of

590 presidents of universities on

immigration and higher

education. None of us by ourselves can

turn around what's happening to

immigrant origin students, to

international students, and to

refugees. We can't do it by ourselves.

We have to do it together.

And we can't be simply looking for

funding from individual federal agencies

that are turning us turning against

it. I love it. Collaboration. It's a

model that um all these people here um

are thinking about and one that I think

is like you said transformative,

empowering and that is going to be part

of the endurances that we will need a

tool for us to be able to work together

and not compete but work together.

That's that's great. Thank you Nancy.

You know, I think part of that

collaboration,

um, one of the things that we kind of

read to prepare for tonight was a

message from the chancellor, right, that

was sent to everybody and and thinking

about the difficulties that we're facing

right now, particularly as higher

education institutions. And, you know,

he seems to take a step back and he

says, well, let's look at what our

founding language says, right? Why were

we created as an institution? What is

our mission? What is our vision? What is

it that we are trying to do? If you take

the mission of institutions, higher

education institutions, and you really

break it down, a lot of them are exactly

the same, right? They're all trying to

do the same thing. And we can come

together and be collaborative because we

are trying to do the same things. We are

trying to have the same impact with the

public. And when politics gets tied into

funding, gets tied into accreditation,

into what you're supposed to be doing,

you go back to your founding words and

you say, "No, this is what we were

created for and this is what we are

going to do because this was created

before you and politics came into play

or or this came into play and we have to

keep moving that forward because how

many institutions have changed their

mission statements, right? uh you know

we might update them a little bit but

right we stick to that founding I call

it our creation stories right we stick

to that knowledge and we move forward

with that

thank you

Shelley some of my favorite thinkers and

institutional leaders and writers and

dreamers

um always remind us that we have to

believe that we can achieve the

impossible

and we've seen it and we're about to

make history to borrow um Shelley Loe's

point. We're about to use our

imaginations

um to to borrow from your point Maurice

Wallace. We're about to

collaborate to borrow from Nancy Caner.

We are about to be responsive to all the

ways we learn including making um

collaborations. Thank you, Bill. um

thinking about libraries and thinking

about the ways that we can transform

without even spending money. And Kathy,

thank you so much for inspiring. And you

know, I've worked with you a lot in many

different capacities. And she always

says to me, your job is to inspire. And

so on that note, I will say thank you

Kathy. Thank you Maurice. Thank you Shel

Maurice Wallace. Thank you, Shelley

Lowe. Thank you, William Bill Kelly.

Thank you, Nancy Caner,

Kathy F.

Davis. I adore

you. And um thank you all for coming

today. Um I hope you get home safely and

that you think of yourselves as agents,

historical agents. Find your comrades

and let's get to work. Thank you.

I realize I forgot to say thank you. The

futures initiative, we're celebrating 10

years and there's a team that works very

hard to uh organize this. Thank you all.

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The Future of Higher Education