Academic Freedom, Immigration, and Carceral Regimes
At the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans
Cosponsored by APLA (Association for Political and Legal Anthropology) and ASAP (Association for the Anthropology of Policy).
When: Saturday, November 22, 6:30-9 pm
Where: Ashé Cultural Arts Center, 1712 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70113 (30 minutes walk, 20 minutes by tram, and 5-10 minutes by car from the conference venue)
Food and cash bar to follow
The state of Louisiana is an important place to talk about the right-wing war upon universities and the utter brutality of crackdowns on immigrant communities. The 4,000-resident town of Jena, is home to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has been detained for his pro-Palestine activism since April of 2025. In this very same site are undocumented workers who have been detained as “criminals” and “aliens” or marked as “threats to national security interests.”
At this critical moment and in this critical place, APLA, in collaboration with ASAP (Association for the Anthropology of Policy), brings together legal experts, immigrant rights defenders, community organizers, scholars and educators to discuss how we can collaborate and strategize together to effectively resist the ongoing attacks on human rights, rule of law, and due process. We call upon Anthropology and Anthropologists to seek ways of moving beyond the ivory towers and envision how their pedagogy, research, and service can advance struggles on the ground. With APLA’s Taskforce on Academic Freedom in mind, we will also discuss how academic associations like the AAA and its sections can work in the service of these struggles.
Featured speakers:
Tia Fields (Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants)
Martha Alguera (Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition)
Matt Olson (New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice)
Tania Wolf (National Immigration Project)
Mary Yanik (Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Tulane University)
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology 