Keynote Address: You Can’t Say That: American Higher Education and the Wars on Free Speech
Event Actions
Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman of the University of Pennsylvania examines the tensions surrounding free speech on college campuses in the wake of global and political events.
His keynote offers historical context and a path forward—centering knowledge, understanding, and open inquiry at the heart of education.
This event is part of Adelphi University’s Freedom of Expression Week Symposium, hosted by the Division of Student Affairs and Office of Diversity Equity, Inclusion and Belonging.
For more information, please contact Cathy Harrison at 516.877.3146 or charrison@adelphi.edu.
About the Keynote Speaker
Jonathan Zimmerman, PhD
Professor of History of Education, Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education
A former Peace Corps volunteer and public school social studies teacher, Dr. Zimmerman holds a PhD in history from the Johns Hopkins University. His scholarship has focused broadly on the ways that different peoples have imagined and debated education across time and space. He has authored books about sex and alcohol education, history and religion in the curriculum, Americans who taught overseas, and historical memory in public schooling. His most recent work examines campus politics in the United States, the teaching of controversial issues in public schools, and the history of college teaching.
Zimmerman’s academic work has appeared in the Journal of American History, the Teachers College Record, and History of Education Quarterly. He is also a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, and other popular newspapers and magazines. He came to Penn GSE after 20 years at New York University, where he served as chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Zimmerman received NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award, its highest recognition for teaching. His former Ph.D. students have held positions at Carleton College, George Mason University, Brown University, and many other institutions.
Zimmerman has received book and article prizes from the American Educational Research Association, the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and the History of Education Society, where he served as president in 2009–2010. He is co-editor of the Histories of American Education book series at Cornell University Press and also of the History and Philosophy of Education series at the University of Chicago Press. He has received several research awards from the Spencer Foundation, which also supported a kickoff conference for his University of Chicago book series.