[Report] NYSEAN Conference on Academic and Intellectual Freedom in Southeast Asia and United States
Held on October 24, 2025 at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University
The best indication of the success of the conference was the number of people who came up afterwards and said, “I learned a lot.” What they said they learned differed: how the “authoritarian playbook” always targets universities and why; the potential for resistance through mobilization through unions of teachers, graduate students and administrators; how voter turnout is as important in Thailand as it is in New York and how important elections are to turning around autocratizing states; and the need for solidarity beyond academia to sectors that are more in touch with everyday cost-of-living concerns. The sense of a common purpose was palpable. But also extraordinary was the ultimate sense of optimism, conveyed most concretely through Pita Limjaroenrat of the (late) Move Forward party in Thailand and Ken Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch, that a) there are smart young leaders available who have both the long-term vision needed and the resources to take power from the autocrats through peaceful means and b) that even if the view from Europe and North America is bleak, there are plenty of signs from Brazil to South Korea that citizens are willing to fight for and win democratic restoration.
The conference started with a presentation by Dr. Ashotosh Varshney from Brown University, who, using India as a case study, laid out the different between liberal and electoral democracy, and underscored, as did subsequent speakers, that elections were a necessary but insufficient to sustain a democracy – it was what happened between elections that maybe mattered more. Leon Botstein of Bard College then reflected on the role of the university, stressing its commitment to truth, and that facts rather than beliefs determined conclusions. He said as an example, if there are three contraptions in an airport waiting to take off, the passengers are not worried about who believes what about who has the best plane, it’s rather the knowledge that facts have determined that all can fly is what matters. Once a university allows politics to interfere with facts, all is lost. He also, however, lamented how out of touch universities had become with most Americans, and the disconnect between the excellence of American “higher” education and the disastrous incompetence of primary and secondary education – meaning that universities increasingly served a clientele divorced from the lives of most Americans. Finally, he highlighted the dangers of fear-induced self-censorship which nearly every other speaker picked up on as a current feature of academic life in every country represented.
The second panel looked at the perspective of Southeast Asia, with panelists from the Southeast Asia Coalition for Academic Freedom, a co-sponsor of the event. The presentations focused on the wide variety of means used to curb academic freedom, all of which had parallels in the US: political appointments of university rectors/presidents/deans; withdrawal of funding; pressure on what to teach or not to teach; doxing and online threats; denials of promotions and other career-inhibiting measures. The specific tactics vary. In the Philippines, especially during Duterte, it took the form of “red-tagging” or accusing someone of being a Communist; in Indonesia, “cyber-defamation” has become a tactic of choice, using social media posts taken out of contests to bring lawsuits of criminal defamation. Kaw Moe Tun of Parami University gave a wrenching account of how, after returning to Myanmar committed to strengthening tertiary education there in 2014, he was forced to flee after the 2021 coup and incorporate his university in Washington DC in 2021, only to now be forced to worry every time he writes or speaks that he could be deported and as such jeopardize the lives of the 300 Burmese students that now see him as a lifeline to a university degree. All noted that they were advising their students not to seek graduate study in the U.S.
The third panel looked at the view from the U.S., with a look from Tom Pepinsky of Cornell at the disastrous long-term impact of cuts in language and area studies and the subtle ways in which restrictions emerge; from Jonathan Friedman of PEN America on the impact of sweeping restrictions on freedom of expression in the US more generally, and how gag orders are increasingly implemented at a state or local level, with no real understanding of legal ambiguities or loopholes that might facilitate resistance. Rachel Cooper looked at cultural exchanges and how these are declining, because of lack of federal funding, increased visa complexities, and general disinterest from Washington.
The final panel, looking at academic freedom and democratic decline, was paradoxically where the hope was, with Pita Limjaroenrat, Prime Minister-designate in 2023 and now banned from politics, cheerfully asserting that he always had a 16-year time frame (four election cycles) and he would remain optimistic as long as he could continue to get out the vote. Ken Roth, while noting that crackdowns on universities were indeed a key part of the authoritarian playbook, suggested that the notion that democracy was in decline around the globe was very much a North American and Western European perspective as the far right gained power – but try to tell that to Brazil or Poland or even Madagascar and Morocco.
The audience included many students from Southeast Asia who used the conference to meet and talk to each other – and a new network may have been born.
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PANEL 1: The relationship between authoritarianism and threats to academic freedom | 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM EDT
This will be a broad scene setting, looking at assaults on academic and intellectual freedom historically and comparatively. What do authoritarians go after first? What is the sequencing? What patterns are we seeing as new democracies falter and established ones decline? How difficult is it to recover once limits are imposed?
Ashutosh Varshney, Brown University
Leon Botstein, President of Bard College
PANEL 2: The view from Southeast Asia | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT
In Southeast Asian countries that have experienced rising authoritarianism and limits on academic freedom, what tactics have governments used? How have scholars, students, and university administrators sought ways to fight back or curtail the damage? What are useful strategies and tactics? If the problem is cyclical, are there safeguards that can be put in place in periods of relative openness? We will be looking at case studies, and the historical dimension of changes over time.
Bencharat Chua, Director of the Southeast Asia Coalition on Academic Freedom (SEACAF)
Herlambang Wiratraman, Gadjah Mada University
Kyaw Moe Tun, President of Parami University
Sol Iglesias, University of the Philippines-Diliman
PANEL 3: The view from the United States | 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM EDT
What do attacks on higher education mean for SEA and freedom of expression? What will be the impact on production of knowledge about SE Asia in the U.S. and the training of future scholars, journalists, policymakers and diplomats? How will the attacks, including deportations, restrictions on visas, and cuts in aid, affect international students, and if numbers fall precipitously, who picks up the slack? What can be done to protect students, scholars and professors from SE Asia? What will be the impact on cultural diplomacy and artistic expression?
Tom Pepinsky, Cornell University
Jonathan Friedman, PEN America, Free Expression Program
Rachel Cooper, Asia Society
PANEL 4: Lessons learned and effective strategies | 3:15 PM - 4:45 PM EDT
This will be more a moderated conversation than a panel, with thoughts about the need for and difficulties of collective action, what works and what doesn’t, the economic costs of resistance, how to get to those with leverage, the costs and benefits of legal battles, how autocratization is reversed.
Pita Limjaroenrat, Visiting Fellow Harvard University and former head of the Move Forward Party in Thailand
Asli Peker, International Relations, New York University
Kenneth Roth, Princeton University and former director of Human Rights Watch
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Asli Peker: “It was such a productive series of discussions and inspired me to think of new ways to build cross-regional collaborations and platforms.”
Ashutosh Varshney: “Many thanks for inviting me to a remarkable day of commentary and deliberation. The most engaging feature for me was how your program connected the specific issues of backsliding in Southeast Asia with the trends worldwide. It was a day of great thoughtfulness that enhanced our horizons.”
Kyaw Moe Tun: “I felt honored to be on a panel among the scholars and practitioners the whole day. I learned a great deal today!”
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To learn more about the conference speakers, please click here.
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To learn more about the speakers and other resources on academic freedom, click here.
