Academic Freedom on Life Support

Robert Scheer

Academic Freedom on Life Support examines how universities across the United States are narrowing the boundaries of acceptable speech and punishing dissent, creating a climate of fear for faculty and students. Through reporting, interviews, and analysis, ScheerPost exposes the political, financial, and cultural forces driving this crisis. When open inquiry collapses, the democratic mission of higher education is put at risk — and this show documents that unraveling in real time.

Episodes

  1. 4 MAR

    Private Eyes on Campus: The New Era of Student Monitoring and Suppression

    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 panic that is chilling dissent and undermining student journalism nationwide.

    21 min

  2. 21 FEB

    Fired for Doing Journalism? Inside the Crackdown on Student Press at UT Dallas

    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 thrive. Those principles are the foundation of academic freedom. We recently had the chance to sit down with a remarkable editor, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, editor-in-chief of The Retrograde. He was formerly the editor of The Mercury, the student newspaper at University of Texas at Dallas, until he and his staff were fired and the paper was shut down. Gregorio will be writing for us soon. In the meantime, you can find his work at the Dallas Observer and at The Retrograde. For more on the story of his firing and the broader attack on student press freedom, see reporting from the Columbia Journalism Review. As CJR reports, student newspapers at several U.S. universities are clashing with administrations over editorial control. Incidents including adviser firings, print bans, and censorship claims have drawn national attention and raised alarm about press freedom on campus. In response, some students have launched independent publications, while legal and advocacy groups push back against restrictions — underscoring broader threats to free expression in higher education. In Gregorio case after covering campus protests, administrative overreach, and the violent police raid on a student encampment, Gregorio and his management team were fired. What has followed was a ban on newsstands, escalating state legislation restricting campus speech, and a broader crackdown on student journalism across Texas and the country. From a so-called “10 p.m. bedtime” for the First Amendment to threats against investigative reporting, this conversation explores what happens when universities operate more like corporations than institutions of inquiry — and what it means for the future of academic freedom, student protest, and the survival of independent campus press. Is this the death of student journalism — or the beginning of something more rebellious and resilient?

    39 min

  3. 15 FEB

    “Tyrants Hate Truth”: Austin Sarat on the New War Against Academic Freedom

    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 sustained attack in more than three quarters of a century” —a moment he compares to the height of McCarthyism. Drawing on two of his recent pieces for ScheerPost, Sarat breaks down how the Trump administration’s campaign against expertise, its efforts to discipline universities, and the rise of students acting as ideological informants have created a climate of fear, confusion, and self‑censorship on campuses. He explains the crucial distinction between free speech and academic freedom, why open inquiry requires courage, and how the very mission of the university is being tested. This conversation is part of our ongoing effort to document what’s being lost—and what’s worth fighting for—as academic freedom comes under unprecedented pressure.

    29 min

  4. 6 FEB

    Academic Freedom on Life Support: Trump’s War on Knowledge

    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 weaponization of the Justice Department to Democratic governors signing bills that criminalize criticism of Israel, the attack on academic freedom is no longer coming from the fringes. It’s bipartisan, it’s systemic, and it’s reshaping the university into a place where surveillance replaces debate and self‑censorship replaces inquiry. In this conversation, Scheer and Macek trace the historical lineage — from Galileo to McCarthy to the present — and confront the chilling reality that tenure no longer protects scholars, adjuncts are silenced by precarity, and entire universities can now be punished for allowing dissent. If you want to understand why America’s intellectual life is collapsing into fear, conformity, and political intimidation, this episode is essential.

    54 min
  • 4 Episodes

About

Academic Freedom on Life Support examines how universities across the United States are narrowing the boundaries of acceptable speech and punishing dissent, creating a climate of fear for faculty and students. Through reporting, interviews, and analysis, ScheerPost exposes the political, financial, and cultural forces driving this crisis. When open inquiry collapses, the democratic mission of higher education is put at risk — and this show documents that unraveling in real time.

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