We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 12 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. As coeditors, we agreed on the theme for the volume, “Practices of Academic Freedom in Times of Austerity,” late last summer—a time of cascading loss and despair, but also of inspiring protests and bold acts of public grieving. Over a year later, the need to protest and grieve has hardly disappeared.

Our call for papers asked potential contributors to consider the relation of academic freedom struggles to broader movements and to envision the university in the larger context of the world and its historical processes. We focused on concrete practices, gathering examples as material for reflection and encouragements for further experiments in transformative change—change that we have come to imagine as "flowers of liberation."

The resulting volume’s twelve articles, divided into four sections, invite readers to engage with academic freedom as a dynamic framework for individual and collective practices rather than as a static ideal or entitlement. Follow the links in the table of contents below or access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/JAF12.

—Rachel Ida Buff and S. Ani Mukherji, Faculty Coeditors

The journal's new coeditors, Michael Dreiling and Pedro García-Caro, will be sharing the call for papers for next year's volume of the journal in October.

The Journal of Academic Freedom is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.

Editors’ Introduction: Practices of Academic Freedom and Flowers of Liberation
By Rachel Ida Buff and S. Ani Mukherji

Poster design by Favianna Rodriguez using artwork by various artists from Reproduce and Revolt.

Table of Contents

Invocations of Academic Freedom

Histories of Struggle

Austerity and Organizing

The Material Means of Mental Production