CFP: Maintaining Balance in Troubled Times

This just in:

AALS 2025 – Courage in Action
Call for Presenters for the Section on Balance and Well-Being in
Legal Education Program at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting

Title: Maintaining Balance in Troubled Times

This program will focus on well-being philosophies and practices for students, faculty, and staff in environments that are hostile to academic freedom. Academics in the U.S. have been under increased pressure to conform to ideological agendas set by legislatures and appointed boards in recent years. The persecution of scholars, and the crackdown on academic freedom, is nothing new; the Scholars at Risk Network notes 259 serious attacks on professors and students worldwide in the last year alone.

The goal of this program is to address the health and well-being concerns of those who are at risk from such attacks. As legislative pressure increases on all scholars, and especially proponents of antiracism, DEIB, and international human rights in the United States, what can students, faculty, and staff do to stay healthy, feel supported, and protect against trauma, while preserving pedagogical and moral integrity?

Potential topics could include, but are not limited to:

• Balancing competing pressures from institutions, legislatures, students, and the legal profession
• Navigating threats to appointment, contract renewal, tenure, promotion, or autonomy in clinic or externship operation
• Promoting “intellectual diversity” without moral injury
• Examining perspectives from scholars who chose (or were forced) to exit hostile environments
• Speaking and acting courageously when a legislature’s agenda is diametrically opposed to the goals of higher education
• Cultivating trauma-informed mindsets at the individual, institutional, and community levels

We invite proposals from individuals or panels of up to three people. Proposals should include a short abstract (no more than 300 words) and names, contact information of all co-presenters and a list of any previous AALS presentations. We welcome proposals from staff, administrators, faculty, first-time presenters, and those new to the academy. In the spirit of modeling well-being practices, please include in the abstract a proposed interactive and/or intention-setting component to incorporate into the presentation.

Please submit proposals to Dan Canon ([email protected]) by June 3, 2024.