March 24, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Trump’s assualt on academic freedom; Book author interview – We the Men – March 23, 2025

58 minutes

The Trump Administration has launched full frontal political assaults on academic freedoms on college campuses. Both professors and students are being targeted for their political positions. Schools fear the loss of funding based on protests on campus and faculty political advocacy. And departments are being targeted not just for classes but also existentially, such as gender studies and Middle East studies. What does this mean for academic freedom, academic excellence, free speech and advocacy on college campuses? How does the attack on colleges and universities signal this countrys drive to authoritarianism. [ dur: 32mins. ]

Mark LeVine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History in the Department of History at UC Irvine. He is the author of Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil and Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Soul of Islam. He is also the co-editor of One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States and Religion and Social Practices and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies.

David S. Meyer is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Planning, Policy, and Design at UC Irvine. He is the author of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America and co-editor of The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement. His blog is Politics Outdoors.

Have women’s stories been made invisible in the retelling of history and law? If so, what are the consequences of that? American history is too often told without the experiences of American women. And American Constitutional Law far too often reflects this invisibility by perpetuating inequality. Today’s guest has a new book on this historical invisibility and its consequences. Jill Hasday is the author of We the Men: How Forgetting Women’s Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality. [ dur: 26mins. ]

Jill Hasday is the distinguished McKnight University professor and Centennial professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She’s the author of Family Law Re-imagined, Intimate Lies in the Law, and her new book We the Men, how forgetting women’s Struggles for equality perpetuates inequality. She is editor-in-chief of Constitutional Commentary.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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