Political Interference, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance: Lessons from Florida and Beyond

Please join us for this livestream of the 2024 Future Professoriate Program Conference keynote address. In recent years, Dr. Afshan Jafar has served as co-chair for the AAUP’s Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina System, which considered the influence of a gerrymandered state legislature on UNC governance and the use of political pressure to obstruct meaningful faculty participation, as well as the Special Committee on Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System, which considered the Florida state government’s “systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda.” Prof. Jafar will describe these investigations and the implications for the professoriate and U.S. higher education at this time in our history.

Afshan Jafar is May Buckley Sadowski ’19 Professor and Chair of Sociology at Connecticut College.