Wooster to welcome speakers for Democracy and Academic Freedom: A Forum beginning in September

The College of Wooster will welcome three speakers for a series of lectures and dialogues titled Democracy and Academic Freedom, A Forum. Speakers will address a range of topics, reflecting on academic freedom in global, institutional, and educational contexts, with a Q&A session to follow. The series, which begins Wednesday, Sept. 3, includes the annual Constitution Day and Bell Lecture in Law on Sept. 17, and the Annual Lindner Lecture on Ethics on Oct. 15. Open to the public, the talks will take place in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University Street) at 7:30 p.m. and will also be live streamed on the College website.

“Academic freedom is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. The freedom to learn and openly express ideas, to question and form hypotheses, generate findings, and suggest solutions is what makes it possible for people and communities to thrive,” said Anne McCall, President of The College of Wooster.  “Academic freedom is not a license to say whatever we want without consequence; rather, it puts ideas out into society so that they can be improved, refuted, or adopted through continued debate and dialogue.”

Eve Darian-Smith, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine

Eve Darian-Smith, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Global and International Studies at University of California, Irvine will open the series with “Contemporary Attacks on Academic Freedom: Historical and Comparative Perspectives” on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Darian-Smith, an award-winning scholar and teacher, trained in law, history, and anthropology, will discuss situations affecting colleges across the United States and around the world. “Reflecting on the global context helps us to better understand what we are facing, and how to resist and defend our right to think freely and challenge antidemocratic forces,” said Darian-Smith. She has published widely in her field including seven books and seven edited volumes. Her most recent book, Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters (2025, Johns Hopkins UP) explores the essential role of higher education and academic freedom in thriving democracies. She is a fellow at the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (American Association of University Professors) which develops national briefs and strategies to defend scholars who have been censored.

Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

The forum will continue Wednesday, Sept. 17, with the Constitution Day and Bell Distinguished Lectureship in Law: “The Art of the Deal: Free Speech in the Age of Trump” featuring Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Greene teaches courses in constitutional law, the law of the political process, and comparative constitutional law. He is the author of How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on constitutional law and theory. From January 2023 to December 2024, he served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. He served as a law clerk to Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and his A.B. from Harvard College.

Robert Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University

The Annual Lindner Lecture in Ethics on Oct. 15 will conclude the series with “Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility” featuring Robert Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. An American philosopher and political theorist, Talisse will explore the responsibilities that correspond with the guarantee of academic freedom and the liberty of professors to pursue and teach their areas of expertise, “developing the idea that academic responsibility includes helping to equip students to navigate a social world that does not yet exist.” Talisse earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2001. His principal area of research is political philosophy, with an emphasis on democratic theory and the civic responsibilities of citizenship. Among his many other works, Talisse recently published Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance with Oxford University Press.

Democracy and Academic Freedom: A Forum is supported by The College of Wooster’s Office of the President, Department of Philosophy, Lindner Endowment, and Bell Distinguished Lectureship in Law. Speakers from throughout the series will be a part of roundtable discussions on campus for Wooster students and the campus community. Live streaming and updates about the event throughout the series will be found here.

All photos provided by the subjects.

Posted in Homepage Featured, News on August 7, 2025.