Rapid globalization, international collaborations, massification, corporate partnerships, increasing number of franchises, regime change, and other conditions of duress are reshaping universities around the world. What are the benefits and what are the risks to academic freedom and free inquiry as universities navigate these trends? This conference will look backward at the role of academic freedom and free inquiry in research universities and forward to what the future may have in store.

This conference will be part of our commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the University in Exile, which was created by Alvin Johnson, the first president of The New School, as a haven for the scholars he rescued from the horrors of Hitler. The University in Exile became the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research and gave birth to our journal, Social Research.

This conference is made possible with generous support from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts.