Who gets to be free? Journalism, higher education, and the politics of possibility

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Speech, Power, and Governance in Global Higher Education

Proposal

What does it mean to experience, imagine, or be denied freedom within institutions that claim to offer it? This paper uses the case of international journalism students from restricted media contexts to examine how freedom (including press freedom, academic freedom, and freedom of movement) is exercised, suppressed, and reimagined in U.S. higher education. While these students are often framed as beneficiaries of liberal education and press freedom, their lived experiences complicate such narratives and reveal how power, precarity, and politics shape both the limits and possibilities of freedom.

Employing narrative inquiry and narrative interviewing, this paper tells the stories of nine international graduate students studying journalism in the U.S. at elite institutions. It treats their stories not merely as accounts of personal struggle but as critical insights into the global politics of education. Their narratives illustrate how freedom is not a static condition granted by institutions, but a contested and relational practice that is mediated by immigration regimes, racialized surveillance, economic dependence, and the geopolitics of knowledge.

This paper brings critical perspectives on justice and freedom into conversation with higher education and journalism studies. It interrogates the assumption that academic spaces in the Global North inherently offer refuge or liberation, and instead considers how students on the margins navigate institutions that simultaneously promise and constrain. In doing so, the paper contributes to rethinking the role of higher education in an era of political polarization, censorship, and rising authoritarianism, and offers visions that challenge dominant imaginaries and call for more just educational futures. Through understanding what it means to educate international journalists in an era of authoritarian resurgence, we can better understand the current transformation that is underway at U.S. universities.

Author

• Samantha K Nissen, Northwestern University