As managing editor of Disobedience Press, it was an honor to guide the book In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis: Activism and the Struggle for Academic Freedom into publication.
Edited by Michael Atzmon, John Cheney-Lippold, Gary D. Krenz, and Melanie S. Tanielian, the book was inspired by the legacy of Chandler Davis, a mathematician and activist who was dismissed from the University of Michigan and jailed in 1954 for refusing to name names before HUAC. His principled defense of the First Amendment reverberates now as educators, scholars, and students once again face political intimidation, censorship, and attacks on academic work.
The 12 contributors to the book — including Ellen Schrecker, Juan Cole, Marjorie Heins, Michael Bérubé, Catherine Stimpson, Henry Reichman, Silke-Maria Weineck, and Alan Wald — argue against the suppression of protest, the policed and surveilled campus, attacks on faculty researching race, gender, and Palestine, the self-silencing of “institutional neutrality” policies, and other enemies of academic freedom. Also included in this volume is posthumously published work by Davis and by his late wife, the historian Natalie Zemon Davis, which reflects on strategies for distributing ideas deemed dangerous by those in power, and the importance of facing authoritarian threats and continuing to speak with “independence of mind.”
This first book to situate Davis’s fight for academic freedom alongside contemporary struggles over education, free expression, and democracy is available through all bookstores and can be purchased directly from Michigan Publishing.
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
“This volume is that rare book that perceptively details assaults on freedom of speech, assembly and association in the 1940s and 1950s, and what these violations of civil liberties and human rights might teach us today in the fight against fascism in Trump’s America.”
— Remembering a Resister (Against the Current)
“The arch of the moral university does not bend towards justice of its own accord. It does so because of those who stand and fight the authoritarians and the fascists. Today, when so many are cowering, or worse, capitulating, it becomes important to reflect on those like H. Chandler Davis who continued to demand justice even during the darkest of times.”
— ISAAC KAMOLA, author of Manufacturing Backlash
“This remarkable volume breathes with the spirit of resistance and resilience as we strive to stand up against today’s official assault on academic and intellectual freedom.”
— HOWARD BRICK Professor of History Emeritus, University of Michigan
“The various writers have interpreted their mandate broadly; some discuss academic freedom issues and barely mention Davis at all, while most others use his example as a beacon in this time of renewed attacks on liberal arts education and academic freedom.”
— RICK WINSTON, “Remembering a Red-Scare Hero,” CounterPunch
“Contributors to In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis are unwavering in their admiration for Davis’s integrity and defense of speech. But they are equally alarmed by the erosion of norms on university campuses today, in red states and blue states alike.”
— Review, Literary Review of Canada, April 2026