MESA’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights established the Academic Freedom Initiative (AFI) in October 2024 to produce analysis and resources for MESA members and the wider public to support academic freedom and to challenge repression on North American campuses.
Join us for the AFI website launch on May 4, 2026 at 12:00 ET!
Speakers will discuss how the website’s resources can be useful to you on your campuses and in defending academic freedom.
The website includes data on topics such as: Title VI lawsuits, congressional hearings of higher education representatives, cases of retaliation against employees on university and college campuses, and information about interference with campus events related to Palestine since October 7, 2023. The website also features resources for academic freedom advocacy and Know Your Rights and FAQ documents about visa and immigration issues.
After a brief overview of the website, speakers will discuss how these resources can be used to defend against those seeking to stifle higher education and free expression about Palestine and the Middle East at institutions of higher learning across the US and Canada.
Isaac Kamola, professor of political science at Trinity College. He is the author of Manufacturing Backlash (detailing the legislative attacks on academic freedom during the 2021, 2022, and 2023 legislative cycles), Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War (with Ralph Wilson, 2021), and Making the World Global: US Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary (2019), along with dozens of journal articles and book chapters. He currently directs the American Association of University Professors Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom.
Anthony Alessandrini, member of MESA’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights, is Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Decolonize Multiculturalism, Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and a poetry chapbook, Children Imitating Cormorants, among other publications. Alessandrini is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, a co-organizer of the International Solidarity Action Research Network (ISARN), and a co-editor of Jadaliyya E-Zine.
Aslı Ü. Bâli, former MESA president, is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Chicago Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Chicago Journal of International Law, Cornell Journal of International Law, among many others, and in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. She has also written essays and op-eds for such venues as The New York Times, The Boston Review, The London Review of Books, Jacobin, and Dissent.