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Just over two months into the second Trump presidency we have a U.S. government that is at war with higher education. It has assaulted and is attempting to eliminate efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion. It has attacked curricula, eliminated  research  support, arrested students  and attacked freedom of expression. These kinds of attacks are not unique to the U.S.
Those of us who care about democracy must resist the forces attempting to erode its institutions. We must defend universities and their core principle of academic freedom, since without an educated citizenry, democracy is unlikely to survive. Our hope for this webinar, a conversation among a distinguished group of former-presidents of major universities, is that listeners will be inspired to defend freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression whenever and wherever they are threatened.
Join our webinar with Lisa Anderson, Lee Bollinger, Nicholas Dirks, and Michael Ignatieff; moderated by Aryeh Neier.Â
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Click the red button above to register and receive the Zoom link.
Presented by the New University in Exile Consortium.
By joining this online event, you will be prompted to accept Zoom Terms of Service. If the session is recorded, you acknowledge that by participating, your name, phone number, and profile picture might be visible to the public. You can customize your personal information when creating your Zoom account. The New School may use any recorded material from the event.
Aryeh Neier is president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations. He was president from 1993 to 2012. Before that, he served for 12 years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder in 1978. He worked 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including eight years as national executive director.
Lee C. Bollinger is the President Emeritus of Columbia University, which he led for over two decades, from 2002 to 2023. Under his leadership, Columbia redefined what it means to be a great research university in the 21st century, distinguished by comprehensive academic excellence, an innovative and sustainable approach to global engagement, two of the largest capital campaigns in the history of higher education, and the institution’s most ambitious campus expansion in over a century.
Nicholas Dirks is a widely respected and highly influential historian and anthropologist, and a prominent leader in higher education.
In June 2020, Dirks assumed leadership of The New York Academy of Sciences as President and Chief Executive Officer.
In 2012, Dirks was named as the 10th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley and served in that role until July of 2017.Â
The Consortium is a globally expanding group of colleges and universities in the U.S., Bangladesh, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Each institutional member is committed to hosting at least one threatened scholar every year and these exiled hosted scholars constitute our scholar cohort. We work with them individually and together to try and lessen the profound sense of dislocation that exiled scholars suffer and which adversely impacts their intellectual and personal lives. Since 2021, the Consortium has expanded its mission to include finding placements for threatened Afghan and Ukrainian academics, students, and artists at Consortium member institutions.
Established in September 2018, the Consortium follows in the tradition of The New School’s original University in Exile created by The New School’s first President, Alvin Johnson, in 1933. The first University in Exile became the home of rescued, largely Jewish endangered scholars from Germany and France. Today, members of the New University in Exile Consortium are hosting nearly 300 exiled scholars from 30 countries.
Is your institution interested in joining the Consortium? Here’s how!
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders. Be sure to visit our Events Calendar to see the full roster.
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