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Lecture 2 Description: The U.S. Supreme Court has said, “the essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation.” Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957). Yet, through state sanctioned censorship public universities in Florida, Texas, and Alabama have imposed intellectual strait jackets on professors and muzzled them from teaching accurate and inclusive curriculum involving topics related to racism, ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies. This lecture will discuss the impacts of this censorship and how we can build power to defend the university as the intellectual incubator of multiracial democracies.

Antonio Lavalle Ingram II serves as Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he works on educational equity and political participation cases in the south. He is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law. He has led litigation against the University of Alabama system and the Texas Tech system to protect academic freedom and combat racial discrimination against professors and students of color.  He worked as a litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster and Boies Schiller Flexner and previously served as a federal judicial law clerk for the honorable Ivan L. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, Louisiana and for Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. He also completed a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship in Malawi where he worked for the Malawian government and served in their Anti-Corruption Bureau.  He has previously served as a Blume Public Interest Leader in Residence and Visiting Lecturer at the Georgetown Law Center and a Racial Justice Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and is a 2026-2027 Richey Fellow at George Washington School of Law. He is a proud first-generation college student and professional.