Sawyer Seminar Supports Duke-N.C. State Collaboration on Academic Freedom
The yearlong series will explore how the humanities shape academic freedom and democracy at U.S. universities.
Duke University and N.C. State University have been awarded a Sawyer Seminar grant for a cross-institutional collaboration exploring challenges to academic freedom that U.S. universities are currently facing. Sharing Ground: Humanities, Academic Freedom, and the Future of the University will examine how the humanities shape ideas of academic freedom, freedom of speech and democratic life within higher education and how humanistic perspectives can help inform these ideals moving forward.
The initiative is led by Charlotte Sussman, Professor of the English Department at Duke University, and James Mulholland, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs with the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of English at N.C. State.
The Sawyer Seminars will support collaboration among a broad and, in many cases, interdisciplinary group of scholars, as well as engagement with the campus community and the wider public.
“This project reflects a partnership between two different institutional contexts: a private university and a large public university,” Sussman said. “This distinction offers an important opportunity to explore how academic freedom is experienced and understood across different higher-education environments, especially within a state like North Carolina where public and private institutions share overlapping intellectual communities.”
Over the 2026–27 academic year, Sharing Ground will present approximately 10 workshops, each focused on a specific discipline. Topics will include philosophical approaches to free speech, the meaning of expression in music and performance, and the relationship between academic freedom and religious practice. Sessions will be free and open to the public. All members of the Duke and N.C. State communities are invited to participate in the sessions listed below.
Seminar Workshops
Planned discussions this fall include:
September 18, 2026 | 4 p.m. | Duke Campus:
Academic Freedom and the Humanities: A Conversation
October 2, 2026 | 2 p.m. | Duke Campus:
Philosophical Approaches to Speech and Expression
October 23, 2026 | 2 p.m. | NC State Campus:
Humanities and the Limits of Academic Freedom
November 6, 2026 | 2 p.m. | Duke Campus:
Academic Freedom and Religious Freedom
December 4, 2026 | 2 p.m. | Duke Campus:
More than Speech? Music, Musicology, and Academic Freedom
The project also includes several collaborative components designed to involve scholars at multiple stages of their careers.
A Humanist-in-Residence postdoctoral fellow will join the seminar for the full year, pursuing research while also working with faculty and students on a project culminating in a public presentation. Duke undergraduate students will participate through the Bass Connections project Sharing Ground: Humanities, Academic Freedom and the University, and students from both universities will be able to attend workshops, meet visiting scholars and explore how questions of academic freedom shape intellectual life across disciplines.
Events are planned at both universities, emphasizing the importance of regional collaboration and of participants working together across institutions.
“The joint institutional involvement of N.C. State and Duke really makes this seminar unique,” Mulholland explains. “We are trying to get faculty to talk across their disciplines but also across their institutions to identify new ways we can all contribute to the future of universities.”
Get the latest Sawyer Seminar updates at the Sharing Ground website.