In a recording that I obtained, Isaac Kamola—the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF)—repeatedly states his desire to delegitimize the upstart civic centers.
“I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy,” Kamola said during the meeting (around the 1:34:50 mark). “I would love to strategically map who these f—ers are, and figure out what the weaknesses are, and design a research agenda that just goes through them and tries to knock them out.”
Through a public records request, I have acquired emails sent to a CDAF program fellow, which include links to agendas, brainstorming documents, grant records, and meeting audio recordings. The documents reveal the group’s idiosyncratic understanding of academic freedom. They also reveal how the CDAF’s funder, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has bankrolled a sprawling public-relations operation to block conservative efforts to reform higher education.
Created in 2024, the CDAF owes its existence to a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Per the center’s grant proposal, CDAF was designed to launch a public-relations campaign defending academic freedom. In practice, it seems to prioritize institutional autonomy above all—including, of course, viewpoint diversity.
CDAF reserves special ire for “civics centers” like the University of Florida’s Hamilton School. In a brainstorming document, Kamola identifies the centers as a key target. “Bring together faculty from different campuses that have dark money-funded, or legislature-imposed, ‘free enterprise,’ ‘civics,’ or other imposed centers,” the document reads.