We continue to make our way through a new reality. Our faculty and students are still navigating the challenges of teaching and learning remotely and in-person while managing health, safety, and familial care. At the same time, the precariousness of academic freedom has become acutely apparent in the aftermath of administrative decisions disallowing (and later allowing) faculty expert testimony in a claim that a new Florida law restricts voting access. These decisions have garnered national rebuke. They have also resulted in collective action across faculty coalitions and shared governance to preserve scholarly and curricular autonomy for the faculty and the institution.
It is important to ground these conversations and actions around academic freedom in the concrete and specific reality at hand. That is, these encroachments on academic freedom are not random. Many specifically limit or have a chilling effect on anti-racism and social justice efforts. This chilling effect is happening at the same time that UF and other institutions are making rhetorical and symbolic commitments to anti-racism and social justice efforts, and calling on faculty, students, and administrators to advance these commitments. This dual reality is not new to scholars and students who have been doing anti-racism and social justice work all along. This work has always been precarious. This work has always involved the paradox of trying to survive in a system at the same time as challenging and stretching that system. This work has always involved wrestling with questions about when one is contributing to healing and transformation versus capitulation and enabling of harm.
It is heartening to see many faculty and students acting in coalition to protect academic freedom. I hope that we will continue this coalition work beyond a single moment. I hope that we will connect the dots across all the decisions that got us here. I hope that we will name the reality that encroachments on academic freedom are often specifically curbing anti-racism and social justice work. I hope that our ongoing work to preserve academic freedom will center the freedom to engage in anti-racism and social justice work, fearlessly.