Professor Ajay Skaria, writing in Academe Magazine: “On March 14, the board voted 9–3 in favor of a resolution prohibiting departments, centers, and other university units from making statements about public issues without authorization from the president. From April 1, the university administration began implementing this resolution, first seeking to take down statements on unit websites about the Gaza genocide, and then, slightly later—likely in response to a caustic observation from a faculty member to senior administrators about this being a classic case of the “Palestine exception” to academic freedom (which historian Ussama Makdisi has recently analyzed brilliantly)—also about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The latter action led to a resignation in protest by Howard Louthan, the director of the Center for Austrian Studies. To counter these actions…on March 25 of this year, the assembly of the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts (CLA), the college’s main policymaking and legislative body, voted unanimously, with three abstentions, in support of a resolution on “Associational Speech and Academic Freedom.” The resolution states that CLA commu­nity members engaged in academic activity will continue to assert their “constitutional rights of free speech not only as individuals in isolation, but as groups of individuals freely associating both within and across academic and non-academic units.” 

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