Law school symposium features many aspects of academic freedom today

Leading legal scholars from across the country examined the intersection of the First Amendment and academic freedom during the 2026 Inclusive Excellence and the Buffalo Law Review Symposium held Oct. 16 at the Center for Tomorrow on UB’s North Campus. Almost 100 guests — a mix of faculty, staff and students from across the university — attended the daylong event.

The panelists addressed topics such as the advocacy role of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), neutrality strategies at universities, and attempts to erode academic freedom under the current presidential administration.

“Whatever we may understand of academic freedom, it is under attack,” Seval Yildirim, vice provost for inclusive excellence and professor in the UB School of Law and a key organizer of the symposium, said in her opening remarks.

“Across the country, faculty, staff and administrators have been expelled from their positions for speaking out or simply teaching on a certain topic,” added Yildirim, who oversees the Office of Inclusive Excellence, which organizes the Campus Community Conversations, a series of talk on current events and an annual symposium.

In the first panel, “Conceptions of Academic Freedom,” the participants discussed seminal cases of academic freedom, including Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of four UB professors who had refused to comply with a New York State law requiring signed loyalty oaths as a condition of employment. Today, there is a growing  concern that the Supreme Court could revisit and either narrow or overturn the ruling, Yildirim said.

The first speaker of the day was David Rabban, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin School of Law.

The author of the 2024 book “Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right,” Rabban emphasized that academic freedom is a First Amendment right, though there remains a lack of clarity in the jurisprudence as to what that right actually entails.

Having served as legal counsel to the AAUP in the 1970s, Rabban pointed to the organization, founded in 1915, as the foundation for many university policies today. During an era in which some states want to dictate what professors can and cannot teach in their classroom, universities and professors have prevailed many times, thanks in part to the AAUP, he said.

Veena Dubal, professor of law at the University of California (UC), Irvine School of Law and the AAUP’s current legal counsel, discussed a 2025 lawsuit, American Association of University Professors et al v. Trump, filed on behalf of the University of California system’s 10 campuses and medical centers. It was in reaction to the Trump Administration’s termination of federal funds and threats to withdraw more over admission and hiring decisions, campus protests and classroom instruction.

“We brought together faculty and union members across the UC system, including researchers, nurses, students and all kinds of university employees, worried about their own freedom of speech,” Dubal said.

And it was successful. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction to stop the administration’s attempt to unlawfully stifle free speech and academic freedom across the UC system and to restore critical research funding.

In this fraught environment, some 150 universities have adopted neutrality strategies on social and political issues as a way to stave off controversy, which isn’t always in their best interests, noted Brian Soucek, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at UC, Davis School of Law.

At the same time, he said, far less attention has been paid to faculty speech in the classroom, which shouldn’t be neutralized.

“Professors have the expertise that informs their decisions in class,” he said. “They are meant to cultivate independence of mind in their students.”

Manoj Mate, professor and Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at the UB School of Law and director of the Jaeckle Center for Law, Democracy and Governance, highlighted that the current law is fraught with voids that leave academic freedom protections uncertain. He also brought up a promising recent development following restrictions on classroom instruction on race and gender, which some two dozen states have passed since 2020.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in July affirmed an order that blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act in the state’s universities. This marked the first appellate court ruling that this type of classroom censorship law is unconstitutional in higher education.

“This Eleventh Circuit Court decision could have major implications for the future of academic freedom,” Mate said. The decision is currently pending review at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the afternoon, a second panel discussion, “Academic Freedom and the First Amendment,” featured the expertise of Anil Kalhan, professor at the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law; Barbara Lee, professor emerita at Rutgers Law School; and Athena D. Mutua, professor and the Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar in UB’s law school.

The day wrapped up with a roundtable discussion, “Academic Freedom in Times of Political Uncertainty,” in which all the panelists participated.

UB moderators for the two sessions and the roundtable, respectively, were Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora, associate professor of law; Lucinda Finley, the Frank G. Raichle Professor of Trial and Appellate Advocacy; and Anthony O’Rourke, the Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad Professor of Civil Justice.

The symposium presentation will be published in the Law Review’s spring 2027 issue.