2027 Annual Meeting

Emancipate. Academic. Freedom. focuses the lens on higher education and law schools as sites of connection between the values of intellectual inquiry and the public good, creation and advancement of knowledge, and the foundational centering of education as an essential part of the democratic project.

In this moment, institutions of higher education are convenient targets of political polarization, ideological censorship, and state interference and intimidation. Specifically, over the past three election cycles, the political climate has resulted in the weaponization of truth, facts, data, and knowledge, which, in turn, has fanned the flames of culture wars, provided cover for the ideological purging of members of our teaching and learning communities, and has caused the public to distrust institutions, like law schools, that are premier democratic organs.  

The theme calls members of the legal academy to understand that an assault on one is an assault on all. It encourages deep thinking about the responsibilities of law schools to uphold democratic ideals, to resist pre-compliance and capitulation to actors committed to the erosion of academic freedom, and to consider the power of solidarity and collective action to preserve and extend academic freedom according to more egalitarian principles. Learning about resistance movements by ordinary people throughout history offers opportunities to develop and sustain coalitions. With the understanding that law schools around the nation are differently situated and have their own sets of stakeholders, the objective is to build capacity to support one another through precarious times as we emancipate academic freedom.  

This theme presents challenges and opportunities: challenges such as romantic notions of academic freedom and exclusivity in the exercise of the privilege; opportunities including launching a coalition dedicated to transforming higher education by regaining public trust, reinforcing the significance of facts and data, and engaging the principles of dissemination of knowledge for the public good. 

Program Committee for the 2027 Annual Meeting 

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, University of California, Berkeley School of Law 
ANTHONY W. CROWELL, New York Law School, Chair 
DANIEL M. FILLER, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law 
RICHARD W. GARNETT, Notre Dame Law School 
SOPHIA Z. LEE, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School 
TROY A. MCKENZIE, New York University School of Law  
ANGELA I. ONWUACHI-WILLIG, Boston University School of Law