Honoring Dissent: Sundial’s Weekend at the CAFC Conference
What I, a free speech advocate, learned from academic heroes who refused to be silenced in the wake of intellectual persecution
Free speech, though exercised by individuals, does not start or end with the individual. Sir Roger Scruton once remarked to an audience at the Acton Institute that, “It is characteristic of our times to regard freedom as an attribute of individuals, to campaign for my freedom to choose my way of life, my rights to proceed in this or that way through life without interference, and to concede the social dimension of freedom only by default.”
Freedom, when pursued only for the self, reduces liberty to the service of one’s immediate affiliations and interests. This is why tradition—the honoring of one’s cultural inheritance—is essential for cultivating a “free culture.” Without it, the cry for “freedom” distorts the meaning of the term. It turns what is supposed to be for the sake of the common good into personal gratification. Though Scruton was explicitly critiquing the “culture of repudiation,” I find his words especially insightful regarding the free speech crossroads we face today.
From the 2010s into the early 2020s—what has been dubbed by Columbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger as the “Great Conformity”—our culture was besieged by illiberal liberals. Now, the tides have turned. Free speech debates revolve around censorship of pro-Palestinian rhetoric and conservative cancel culture. These two pro-free speech factions—one born of crazed identity politics and the other of conservatives in power—need not exist in opposition. Surprisingly, they share important similarities. Both stem from ideological orthodoxy and bad-faith assumptions about our fellow man.
As someone whose unequivocal devotion to free speech grew from a disdain for leftist activism, I know the dangers of succumbing to identitarianism. Even still, it is easier, I imagine, to defend free speech as it benefits my “way of life,” that being my worldview. However, the anti-woke crowd should not repeat the offenses of the left. Free speech must not end where any one person’s comfort does. Rather, we should welcome these “new age” free speech activists into the movement. This ensures that free expression does not become another identity one can flaunt around.
To help those who only recently became invested in the cause, it bears remembrance: The fight for free speech was not born yesterday. Those who profess to care about free speech today ought to know about the struggles beyond their here and now.
The most salient example lies close to home: our own professors. Last month, Sundial was invited to the Columbia Academic Freedom Council (CAFC) Conference and Awards Ceremony. At the day-long conference, I heard firsthand stories of academics across the ideological spectrum who fought—and continue to fight—for the pursuit of truth against censorship, both overtly and covertly. Their courage left me with immense gratitude. These professors did the intellectual heavy lifting to defend free expression at Columbia when it was less in vogue, making the work of both student activists and Sundial possible.
Columbia academics have long gathered informally to discuss free speech, yet the Council was only formally founded in October 2023. According to its website, its purpose is “to welcome, foster, and defend freedom of inquiry and expression.” Grounding itself in “intellectual diversity,” and “civil discourse,” the Council affirms that these principles are not only necessary for establishing common ground, but also for preserving the integrity of the University. “We believe these have come under pressure in recent decades, a trend which, left unchecked, will further erode societal trust in our universities as centers of teaching, learning, research, and innovation,” declares the Council’s Statement of Responsibilities, adopted January 17, 2024.
The inaugural 2025 Academic Freedom Prize and Conference celebrated “30 academics who have suffered repercussions for their pursuit of truth and have stood up to defend free speech and academic freedom,” according to the invitation.
In a statement to Sundial, Jonathan Rieder, professor of sociology at Barnard College and co-Chair of CAFC, clarified the criteria for awardees. He explained that “the awardees shared a common lot of having suffered for having the gumption to voice ‘wrong’ opinions—lost jobs, journal articles retracted, online bullying, and much more.” He also explained that “they had shown resilience in standing up and refusing to surrender to the censorious forces that sought to shame and silence them.”
Seated in the Yale Club’s ballroom in Midtown Manhattan, professors and academics from around the country met on Saturday, September 13, 2025 to celebrate the thirty awardees. The conference included four panels and a lunch lecture with Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU.
The breadth of awardees reaffirmed CAFC’s stated mission. Jodi Shaw, a former librarian of Smith College, resigned in 2018 after a supervisor told her she could not perform a rap song at an event for students because, as “a white staff member, [it] could easily be perceived as insensitive or cultural appropriation.” Aaron Werner, an assistant professor of religion at Liberty University, was terminated mid-semester for encouraging students to ask questions that challenged their Republican politics and faith. Allan Josephson, a University of Louisville psychiatrist, was fired for speaking out against hormone therapy at a panel discussion. Pediatrician Jeffrey L. Goldhagen was blocked by the University of Florida from testifying in lawsuits challenging Governor Ron DeSantis’s prohibition of school mask mandates.
These are just a few out of the thirty awardees. I encourage you to look through the full list.
Given the conference’s panel format and limited speaker time, awardees were selective about the details of their cases and the lessons they chose to emphasize. In most, if not all, there was little concern for a ruined reputation or securing another university appointment. The most consistent sentiment was concern for their students and patients. Many felt insulted that their adversaries—administrators or activist scholars—resorted to ad hominem attacks with the worst offenses of the modern day: bigoted, close-minded, and those of every “ism.” Instead of engaging with their evidence and claims, critics dismissed them with labels.
Many of the awardees also stressed the pervasive effect of intellectual orthodoxy on American university life. Shaw noted that “young people are finding their identity, which is being co-opted by their social identity.” Anne Protopappas, formerly a French teacher at the private all-girls Spence School in New York, urged her students: “don’t be a mutton.” She wanted to ensure they knew how to ask questions and avoid what she called “self-inflicted infantilization.” Cary Nelson, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, underscored this concern for students by stating that the purpose of a professor is to take responsibility for the character of their university.
While I had long known of professors’ battles for academic freedom in the humanities, it was the doctors and medical professionals who showed me what was truly at stake: life and death. University of Pittsburgh cardiologist Norman Wang, when preparing to publish an academic article critiquing affirmative action, told himself he “was okay getting shot for this.” Doubling down on his justification at the panel, he stated that “hundreds of thousands of people died for this legislation, and for us to push it aside is not something I was okay with.”
It was clear that the Council’s concern was not to promote any particular opinion, but to defend the very practice of the “development of science.” While some professors did hold right-leaning views on issues like affirmative action or gender transition policies, they were not convened to advance those positions. This was evident in the case of Martin Kulldorff and Goldhagen, awardees who held opposing views on pandemic public policy. Seated together on a panel entitled “The Way Forward,” and acknowledging their intellectual differences, Kulldorff invited Goldhagen to debate whether “what our community recommended turned out to be a disaster.”
Viewpoint diversity did not mean the awardees lacked shared principles. First, they shared a sense of purpose in their work. Their goal was not simply to pursue their subjective interests but to seek the Truth on the conviction that there is, in fact, the Truth and not “our truths.”
Second, they agreed that activism does not belong in the classroom. Awardee Tabia Lee, former faculty director of Foothills-De Anza Community College’s Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education, received a round of applause when she remarked that the real issue is “activists who are hellbent on destroying the American and Western way of life” by injecting gender, identity, and race into our houses of worship and civic life.
My impression of the awardees was confirmed by Rieder, who wrote to Sundial post-conference that “Above all else, [the Council] aims to affirm classic values of liberal arts education and free expression: robust and civil debate, tolerance for rival opinions, the search for truth unimpeded by dogma.”
Admittedly, many of the charges against professors were absurd. Some reflected the excesses of “anti-racism.” Others were the result of voicing what is now obvious. Samuel J. Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College, for example, has spent seven years in a legal battle for writing an op-ed on the overrepresentation of liberal administrators.
The candid, deeply personal stories reaffirmed the ideological insanity of the past decade. While it was comforting to hear so many academics echo opinions I hold, it was also unsettling. Why were these academics’ livelihoods on the line for the most benign actions? Since April 2024, Sundial’s writers have published several critiques of DEI policies, liberal bias, and administrative incompetence without fear of repercussions, stigma, or even a harshly worded email. One might say this is because we are irrelevant. Perhaps so. But more importantly, we never self-censor or weigh our arguments against our social standing.
Shaw described how speaking out, especially when you are the first to do so, can make you feel like a pariah. Sundial, by contrast, does not second-guess itself. The reason is that we know we are not alone. The awardees have spoken up and created an intellectual community in which students can confidently express their opinions. These professors were willing to put their career prospects on the line for their students’ freedom. That freedom meant not only the ability to criticize but also to voice opinions without fear of retaliation.
This intellectual milieu is sustained by the Op-Ed. Many awardees were caught in controversy for words they had written—or words written about them. Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, was disinvited from a prestigious lecture after writing a Newsweek article in defense of Merit, Fairness, and Equality, a proposed alternative to DEI. Even after Allison Stanger of Middlebury College was assaulted while moderating a talk with the controversial political scientist Charles Murray, she told the crowd: “I retaliated the best I could. With my pen.”
This should be a standard for students and activists alike. The American body politic, if it is to be continuously reinvigorated in the fight for free expression, cannot do so through violence, ad hominem attacks, or pretextual claims. Such strategies collapse the pursuit of free speech into nothing more than shallow, self-interested endeavors. It must be carried forward through the distinctive quality of our tradition of writing and expressing one’s opinion.
Words, when articulated in a cogent argument, are not a form of psychological harm, not hate speech, and not—as many on the left now claim—violence. They are the common language that ensures the pursuit of Truth is not co-opted by any ideology. The only ideology worth being dogmatic about is one that all who engage in this discourse in good faith should share: the values of classical liberalism and the healthy exchange of ideas. Our shared intellectual tradition in the West is the one thing we must be dogmatic about, for it preserves our right to simply believe. Revering this tradition means to remember—and to stand firmly upon—the heroic history of dissent that sustains free speech today and will carry us through the challenges ahead.
Ms. Chaudhry is a senior at Columbia College studying history. She is a deputy editor for Sundial.
Superb piece. I’ve come to expect nothing less from Sundial!