50629 - Politics on Campus

Description

Sociologists who have recently held or currently hold roles in prominent University leadership positions ranging from Chair, Dean, Provost, to President hold a conversation about the ways in which politics and culture wars are permeating today’s university, ranging from external attacks by the federal government, activists, state legislatures, and alumni donors to internal conflicts over how to defend academic freedom, free speech and political partisanship among the university community.

Session Organizer: Jennifer Lundquist, Interim Dean and Senior Associate Dean at the University of Massachusetts. She developed the University’s Academic Freedom Crisis toolkit, which has been adopted by multiple institutions and is co-founder of the national Stand together for Higher Ed. She is a member of Isaac Kamala’s Faculty First Responders group and collaborates with the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom on various initiatives. Her scholarship has appeared in in a variety of outlets, from UCPress, The Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, American Journal of Sociology, and American Sociological Review and she is the lead author of a well-known demography textbook. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Mellon and Humboldt and covered by outlets ranging from Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times and National Public Radio.

Moderator/Discussant
Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor of communication and journalism at Stony Brook University. He got his PhD in sociology from Columbia University. He previously served as the communications director for Heterodox Academy and is currently a columnist for The Guardian. Musa's scholarship explores how we talk about, think about, and produce a shared understanding of social issues. His first book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, explored the political economy of the knowledge professions from the interwar period through the present. It was published by Princeton University Press in October 2024.

Panelists
Enobong (Anna) Branch is the senior vice president for equity at Rutgers. She provides strategic leadership to ensure that the institutional commitment to equity is reflected in the research, educational, and public engagement efforts that occur throughout the university and the focus extends to faculty, staff, and students. She leads the University Equity and Inclusion office championing the role of diversity and inclusion in achieving excellence and strengthening the institutional commitment to its diverse community on and off campus.

Andrew J. Perrin is Chair and SNF Agora Professor in the Sociology Department at Johns Hopkins University. He was the Ruel W. Tyson Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill from 2001-2021, where he also led the development of UNC's general education curriculum, IDEAs in Action. His research focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of American civic life, including a focus on the role of higher education in fostering citizenship. He recently co-hosted a conference, Universities and Democracy: Critics and Defenders, for frank conversations across disagreements about higher education's successes, failures, and opportunities.

Rogelio Sáenz is a sociologist and demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is professor in the Department of Sociology and Demography. He was the Dean of the College of Public Policy from 2011-2019. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He was recently inducted as the 2023 Ernest W. Burgess Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Saenz received his PhD in sociology from Iowa State University. He has written extensively in the areas of demography, Latina/os, race and ethnicity, inequality, immigration, aging, public policy, and social justice. Sáenz is co-author of Latinos in the United States: Diversity and Change. He regularly writes op-ed essays for a variety of media outlets throughout the country.

Teresa A. Sullivan, a leading scholar in labor force demography and former provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan, took office as the University of Virginia's eighth president, and first woman in that role from 2010-2024. Dr. Sullivan was the George M. Kaufman Presidential Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and recently became Professor Emerita at UT Austin.

Sub Unit

• Special Session

Presider

• Musa al-Gharbi, Stony Brook University

Panelists

• Enobong (Anna) Branch, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

• Andrew J. Perrin, Johns Hopkins University

• Rogelio Saenz, University of Texas at San Antonio

• Teresa A. Sullivan, University of Virginia

Session Organizer

• Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, University of Massachusetts-Amherst