This year's William Hammond Lecture on the American Tradition will feature Henry “Hank” Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University East Bay, co-editor of the AAUP’s Academe blog, president of the AAUP's at-large chapter and member of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance. His talk is titled "The Assault on Academic Freedom and the Crisis of Higher Education."
The lecture engages with academic freedom and identifies a widespread crisis in American higher education. The philosopher John Dewey once wrote: “Any attack, or even any restriction, upon academic freedom is directed against the university itself.” Today the Trump administration’s widely publicized efforts to extort and subdue prominent research universities are but one example of a wide-ranging assault on academic freedom in which the federal and state governments, political pressure groups and university trustees and administrators themselves have been complicit, far exceeding anything in prior US history, including the anti-Communist scare of the 1950s. This poses a crisis for all of higher education, one that demands both a staunch defense and a reinvigoration of the university’s fundamental mission.
This event is free, open to the public and welcoming to everyone.
Henry "Hank" Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay. He served as AAUP first vice-president from 2012 to 2018 and as chair of the AAUP Foundation from 2014-2022. From 2012 to 2021 he chaired AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He has served on six AAUP investigating committees, including most recently co-chairing its investigation of academic freedom in Florida, and co-authored numerous AAUP policy statements and reports. He is currently a member of AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance, a co-editor of the AAUP’s Academe blog and president of the AAUP's at-large chapter.
Reichman's book The Future of Academic Freedom was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom, which has been called "the best book on the subject," was also published by JHUP in October 2021; a second expanded edition came out in March 2025. His Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools, was published by the American Library Association in three editions (1988, 1993, 2001).
At CSU East Bay Professor Reichman served as chair of the department of history from 1994-2003, as a member of the academic senate from 1995-2010, including three terms as chair, and on the CSU System academic senate from 2001-2010. He was named the CSUEB Outstanding Professor in 1998 and won the university’s faculty service award in 2005. He also served nine years on the California Faculty Association’s collective bargaining team. He has published numerous articles and reviews on academic freedom, university governance, and tenure and spoken at dozens of colleges and universities.
Professor Reichman earned the B.A. at Columbia and the Ph.D in Russian and European history at UC Berkeley. His Railwaymen and Revolution: Russia, 1905 was published by UC Press in 1987 and republished in 2021 as part of the press’s Voices Revived program.
Parking
The nearest public parking is the Neil Avenue Garage, 1801 Neil Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210. The other garage within walking distance is the Tuttle Garage, 2050 Tuttle Park Pl. Columbus, OH 43210.
The Humanities Institute and its affiliated centers host a wide range of events, from intense discussions of works in progress to cutting-edge presentations by world-renowned scholars, artists, and activists, and everything in between.
We value in-person engagement at our events as we strive to amplify the energy in the room. To submit an accommodation request, please send it to Cody Childs childs.97@osu.edu.