Event Series

Joseph P. Gone is the Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program and an international expert in the psychology and mental health of American Indians and other Indigenous Peoples. A professor at Harvard University, Dr. Gone has collaborated with tribal communities for 30 years to critique conventional mental health services and to harness traditional culture and spirituality for advancing Indigenous well-being. As a clinical-community psychologist and action researcher, he has published over 120 scientific articles, and received recognition in his fields through more than 25 fellowships and career awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. An enrolled member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana, he also served briefly as the Chief Administrative Officer for the Fort Belknap Indian reservation. In 2023, Gone received a Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Abstract:
Indian sports mascots—including Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois—are harmful racial stereotypes. First, the “Indians” of sports culture in America are portrayed inaccurately. Second, the kinds of inaccurate portrayals of the “Indians” of sports culture in America are not particularly novel, inspired, or original, but instead follow enduring historical modes of representing American Indians as a primitive racial group in the United States. Third, as stereotyped portrayals of a primitive racial group, the “Indians” of American sports culture undermine, circumscribe, or overwhelm the efforts of some five million modern-day citizens of federally recognized Tribal Nations in our efforts to recover from longstanding dispossession and marginality in our own homelands. In this public exchange, I will review these arguments, recount my own personal experience with advocating for mascot removal at UIUC, and consider historical university efforts to manage risk associated with sponsoring a popular—albeit harmful—racial stereotype.

Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, Indian Country Today, and NPR to name a few. Ahtone’s stories have won multiple honors, including a George Polk Award, Richard LaCourse awards, a National Magazine Award nomination, and investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and IRE: Investigative Reporters and Editors. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow.

Abstract:
This presentation examines the entangled histories of Indigenous land dispossession, the founding of the land-grant university system, and epistemicide in settler colonial institutions. Building on the Land-Grab Universities and Misplaced Trust investigations, and drawing from current efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate diversity initiatives at U.S. institutions, this talk draws a direct line between the violent expropriation of Indigenous territories to the erasure of Indigenous peoples on campuses and in American institutions at large, ultimately arguing that ideas of academic freedom cannot be disentangled from questions of historic justice and decolonial action.

Rachel Ida Buff is Professor of History and Director of the Culture and Communities Program at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Her research and teaching interests include immigration rights, comparative ethnic studies, and diasporic cultural citizenship. She has published a multitude of books and articles including her latest book Against the Deportation Terror: Organizing for Immigrant Rights in the Twentieth Century and chapter publications in Deportation in the Americas, Histories of Exclusion and Resistance (2017), Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice in Palestine (2017), and New Routes for Diaspora Studies (2012). Her previous appointments include Coordinator of the Comparative Ethnic Studies program at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and Associate Professor of History at Bowling Green State University. Buff holds a BA from Brown University and an MA and PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Abstract:
In this presentation, Professor Buff will historicize the advent of private consultancies in the 20th century, a development that accompanied the ascendance of  managerial capitalism and the military industrial complex. These consultancies made their way into higher education during the 1980s as part of  neoliberal “reform” of education; they gained more traction through disaster capitalism following the Great Recession of 2008 and the Covid-19 Pandemic. The talk examines the practices and consequences of this ubiquitous for-profit, industry. Often invisible to students and academic workers, private consultancies are reshaping the contemporary university, with important consequences for workplace democracy and governance as well as academic freedom.

Laura Helmuth is a journalist, freelance editor, writer, and consultant who formerly served as editor in chief of Scientific American, where you can still read her many features. She previously worked as an editor for the Washington Post, National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian and Science. A former president of the National Association of Science Writers, Helmuth is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s standing committee on advancing science communication and an advisory board member for SciLine and The Transmitter. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley, and recently won a Friend of Darwin Award from the National Center for Science Education. Her current writing can also be found at Slate and The Last Word on Nothing.

Abstract:
Universities, public health organizations, federal science agencies, and publishers have become targets of political forces that are threatened by the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. New restrictions on funding, collaborations, and inclusion are disrupting crucial research and limiting who is allowed to pursue it. The power imbalance is severe right now, and individuals and institutions are at risk of losing grants, students, jobs, and opportunities. The way out is to build support for academic freedom, long-term research, honest assessments of history, and life-saving public health policies. Experts who share their knowledge with journalists or communicate directly through mass media face risks but can make a difference. We’ll cover best practices, practical advice, and possible outcomes of doing so, and how people in different fields of expertise can support one another’s overlapping missions.

Dr. Jonathan Holloway is the President and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation. Prior to joining Luce, Dr. Holloway served as the 21st President of Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey. Prior to Rutgers, he was provost of Northwestern University. Dr. Holloway served as the Dean of Yale College and Edmund S. Morgan Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of African American History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2023), The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2021), Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

Dr. Holloway earned a Bachelor of Arts in American studies from Stanford University, and a PhD in history from Yale University.

Abstract:
For this event, Dr. Holloway will join Chancellor Charles L. Isbell, Jr. and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor John Coleman for a moderated conversation about their experiences and observations on the role of risk management in leadership for higher education today.

Christopher Newfield was Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is now Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation in London. He has written a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution: Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 (Duke University Press, 2003); Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class (Harvard University Press, 2008); and The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), is co-editor of The Limits of the Numerical (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and is co-author of What Metrics Matter? Academic Life in the Quantified University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). His current projects involve the cultures of “AI,” literary and cultural knowledge, the future of higher education, and the culture of social equality.

Abstract:
Prior to the 2024 presidential election, public disappointment with universities had reached epidemic proportions. The fees are too damn high, debt and work-study damage students’ learning and their college experience, and universities seem to do a poor job of launching students on their careers. 

Then, the Trump Administration took power, and has proceeded to undermine every university revenue source, from federal research funding and student loan programs to international student tuition and endowment income.  University presidents and boards have not come together to reject these moves as illegal and unjustified. Nor have they withstood or redirected the reputational damage inflicted by unleashed allegations of antisemitism and bias.  Where do we go from here?  

I’ll argue that public universities must confront and replace an entrenched financial model that disserves education while undermining their own fiscal solvency.  We’ll discuss the incorrect belief that learning equals earning in conjunction with epic institutional dependence on debt, asset price inflation, and risk management.  We’ll find a pathway out of the current impasse that derives from findings in humanities scholarship about how everyday life benefits from the suspension of economic incentives.

For this tour….[more here]