On today’s episode of Academic Freedom on the Line, we’re talking about students, labor, migration, and what happens at the intersection of all those categories. We talk about how and why higher education workers must resist the rising tide of fascism on and off campus, and get organizing lessons from the front lines. 

Our guests today are: 

A. Naomi Paik, the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (2020) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (2016). She is a part of the Migration Scholars Collaborative and a founding member of the Sanctuary Campus Network and Sanctuary for All UIC.

Abbie Boggs, who teaches in the department of sociology, college of education studies, and program in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University. Her first book, Degrees of Empire: Noncitizen Students and the Making of US Higher Education, is forthcoming this year from Fordham University Press. 

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández holds the Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University College of Law. His most recent book is “Welcome the Wretched” and he publishes Immigration Law Unhinged, a free weekly newsletter on Substack.

William I. Robinson, distinguished Professor of Sociology, Global and International Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  His latest book is Epochal Crisis:  The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (2025) 

Sources mentioned in the podcast

• Degrees of Empire - Abigail Boggs 
• Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation 
• Rightlessness by A. Naomi Paik  
• Sanctuary Campus Network
• The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act) 
• Migra: A History of U.S. Border Patrol by Kelly Lytle-Hernandez 

Helpful Resources for Deeper Dives

• Interview with William i Robinson on his latest book, Epochal Crisis 
• Covering Surveillance, Struggles and Solidarity in the Arab American Community - MERIP 
• One Million Experiments 
• Schools Drop ICE 
• Debt Collective