Digital Social Hour
How 39 Professors Silenced Academic Freedom | Ann Atkinson DSH #1068
Tue, 07 Jan 2025
🚨 How 39 Professors Silenced Academic Freedom | A shocking expose of cancel culture in academia 🎓 Tune in as Sean Kelly sits down with Ann Atkinson to uncover the alarming truth about academic censorship! 😱 Ann shares her jaw-dropping experience at Arizona State University, where 39 professors united to silence free speech and dismantle a million-dollar program. 💸 You won't believe the extent of self-censorship and fear among students! 🤐 Discover how a simple event with successful entrepreneurs led to a full-blown cancel culture campaign. 🎤 🔥 Hot topics include: • The shocking 15:1 ratio of Democrat to Republican professors • How faculty, not students, drive cancel culture • The urgent need for syllabi transparency in universities Don't miss out on this eye-opening conversation! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly. 🚀 Join the conversation and learn how to protect academic freedom! 🗽 #AcademicFreedom #CancelCulture #HigherEducation #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #currentaffairs #accountabilityculture #educationreform #futureofcollegeeducation #criticalthinking CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:26 - Amfest Event Overview 06:38 - Prolon Health Benefits 07:33 - Legal Action Discussion 11:38 - College Students' Fear of Disagreement 13:39 - Solutions for Student Concerns 18:01 - Importance of Syllabus Transparency 20:00 - Following Ann's Work APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Ann Atkinson https://x.com/ann_atkinson_az https://www.instagram.com/k.ann.atkinson/ SPONSORS: Prolon: http://prolonlife.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/
Chapter 1: What is the main issue with academic freedom?
orthodoxy and it's not a conservative democrat i mean a model but it's really about people that are free thinking libertarians people that value hard work that think we're all equal despite our skin color or where we're from that we all are deserving of respect if you don't subscribe to what's really the pervasive orthodoxy i mean you're you're ostracized that's insane
Chapter 2: What happened at the AmFest event?
All right, guys. Anne Atkinson here today. We're at AmFest. Is this your first one?
This is my second AmFest. I was here as a speaker last year talking about cancel culture and free speech. And this is my second annual and best AmFest.
Let's go. Yeah, you went through some cancel culture yourself. So I'd love to hear more about that.
I did. You know, what's interesting about cancel culture is it stems in higher education from arbiters who appoint themselves as those that know best, right? And my experience in cancel culture came from the largest public university in the My wrongdoing was to bring Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager and Robert Kiyosaki to have a lecture and interview on the topic of health, wealth, and happiness.
Chapter 3: How did cancel culture manifest at ASU?
And the students didn't protest. The faculty and the deans ran an all-out condemnation campaign. So I dealt with cancel culture from within. Right. And I also got to see really the inner workings in higher ed and what should be a great university. Arizona State University should be leading in public speech and freedom of thought.
But I saw how cancel culture really works and how the radical activists from within cause people to self-censor, too.
Yeah.
So there's top-down, covert, and then there's this self-censorship movement that's overt. So my personal experience went viral. It turned into a national story. And I've been very public about it and working hard to do something and get some real results so that more students to come and other faculty and staff don't face the same thing that I went through.
Absolutely. Here you are providing... three great entrepreneurs to these students to learn from and then you get canceled for it. I mean, Kiyosaki is a billionaire. I think Charlie Kirk's obviously got a huge company. We're at his event right now with 20,000 people and you get canceled. And did you lose your job over this?
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Chapter 4: What are the consequences of inviting controversial speakers?
I lost my job. So here's how it happened. I was the executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, which happens to be my alma mater. Wow. And I ran this center as really an outside entrepreneur coming into higher ed to bring the real world to these students.
Our center existed to teach entrepreneurship, career success, personal finance, self-awareness, happiness, really great. We're great, comfortable, practical topics. And we also existed to address the traditional American values of hard work, personal responsibility, faith, family, community service, and civic duty. That was very triggering to many of the faculty from within.
So in my role as executive director, I curated programs and content and had Robert Kiyosaki speak to the students on seven different occasions, had speakers like Joe Polish of the Genius Network coming in to pour into these students at no cost to them to help connect them to the real world. The faculty didn't like it much. We were a very successful program.
The turning point there, and there's a lot that happened from within, but the real turning point was my invitation of Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk, and Robert Kiyosaki. And the faculty launched a condemnation campaign that led to the loss of my job as executive director. It led to the dismantling of the entire Lewis Center, which was a million-dollar program. Wow. And led to the loss of Ms.
Lynn Blake, who was the events operations manager at the venue that hosted our event. Wow. So they took all of us out that had anything to do with this. And again, it wasn't public protesters. It wasn't students picketing. They were the faculty and the deans of the Honors College.
Crazy. That's unreal. Do you think this is an ASU issue or do you think it's affecting all of college campuses in America?
Oh, this issue is so pervasive. ASU should be on the better end of the spectrum. But the College Fix just came out with research in the past couple of days. They looked at party affiliation within just ASU faculty through public records requests. And 15 to 1, these professors at ASU are Democrat to Republican. And that is very representative of what happens within the university. So...
And higher ed, think about the talent pipeline of professors. Where do they come from? They come from higher ed. Right. And so their ideas, their studies, their research tends to go deeper and deeper into issues, which at the moment... Shout out to today's sponsor, Prolon.
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Chapter 5: What is the political landscape among professors?
Programs like the Lewis Center, which wasn't a political program at all. It wasn't faith-based. We just brought the real world. And those programs are attacked from within. Now, in my personal experience, again, covert, overt, some attacks were really direct.
I had, over my decision to invite those speakers, a longstanding professor within the university emailed me on the ASU email account, threatening to write a media hit piece focused on me and my career. Because he didn't like the opinions of the speakers that I brought.
And I've seen and I know the people within the university and with other universities that have faced complete retaliation for simply having a view that's different from the orthodoxy. And it's not a conservative, Democrat,
I mean, a model, but it's really about people that are free thinking, libertarians, people that value hard work, that think we're all equal despite our skin color or where we're from, that we all are deserving of respect. If you don't subscribe to what's really the pervasive orthodoxy, I mean, you're ostracized.
That's insane. Did you want to pursue them legally after this happened to you?
So I considered pursuing ASU legally. And my decision was, I really think I can make more change by dealing with things a little untraditionally. So after these attacks went on, in which, by the way, 39 of the 47 honors faculty signed a condemnation campaign petition against me in the Lewis Center. 39 of the 47. Mm-hmm.
That's crazy.
This wasn't, you know, a couple faculty that were... And even people you're talking to on campus, right?
They're not just strangers.
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Chapter 6: How do students feel about expressing their views?
So I took this through the normal channels, through HR, through all the acronym levels of the bureaucracy, all the way up to the president and the board of regents, which oversee our public universities in Arizona, thinking that they would see how insane this is, thinking that they would see the student testimonials I provided talking about how their teachers told them in their class, do not attend.
This is an event for white supremacists. I thought leadership would say, no. And nothing happened. So I met with the provost. I submitted documentation to the president and the board of regents and the provost, including student testimonials, students saying how they were afraid to be photographed at our event. And nothing happened. Wow. The new dean of the Honors College fired me.
And the provost said, well, you know, you invited these controversial speakers and you need to face the consequences for that.
Wow.
That's when I went public.
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Chapter 7: What can be done to protect academic freedom?
That is nuts. Did the students end up backing you afterwards?
The students were even the most, the strongest students, those with the most conviction. Ultimately, they're students that don't want to have their academic records dinged for expressing their views. Even my, the strongest students, you know, asked me not to publicly reveal their involvement or those that attended the event made me promise they wouldn't be photographed. Oh. They were scared.
They were scared of facing consequences and retaliation by their professors. So privately, they were very supportive. Some of them met with legislators in Arizona. Some of them went to the Capitol with me later on. Wow. They were involved, but timidly so because they feared the professor's backlash.
That's such a shame, right? You know?
Yeah.
They're going there to learn, to make a living, and they can't even be themselves. They can't express themselves.
They have to self-censor. And isn't the point of higher education to prepare us really for the real world? Yeah. Right? And to let people explore truth and ideas. But what's happened is now higher ed is prescribing acceptable views. Yeah. And so often saying, well, other views are hate speech and dangerous and you shouldn't think that way, which then causes this self-censorship that we're seeing.
So quick research, FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression, put out their 2025 annual student survey. Yeah. They surveyed 58,000 undergraduate students across the country. They do this every year. They work with College Pulse.
And only 13% of the students surveyed this year are comfortable disagreeing with their professors on any type of controversial political topic in the classroom.
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