This conference examines the future of higher education in an increasingly authoritarian global environment marked by democratic backsliding, political polarization, and intensifying state efforts to control knowledge production. Across regions, universities face intersecting pressures: geopolitical instability, new technologies, shifting patterns of mobility, growing demands for measurable “impact,” and deepening contests over truth, history, and public trust.

A central concern of this convening is systemic autonomy in higher education: the capacity of teaching and research to be guided by scholarly standards rather than direct political instruction. Universities are never separate from politics, law, the economy, or media. The question is which institutional arrangements allow these relationships to support, rather than undermine, free inquiry.

The Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages invites all to attend and engage!

✒️Register here *Attendance is free

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