The University of Arkansas School of Law is the latest educational institution to be embroiled in the debate over academic freedom. In January, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville announced that an accomplished law professor named Emily Suski would be the incoming dean of its law school. She’d been selected after a lengthy search and praised by the university’s provost.
But, key Republicans dug into Suski’s background and complained about her legal positions on transgender athletes. Less than a week later, the university withdrew the appointment and issued a statement explaining that “[a]fter receiving feedback from key external stakeholders including elected officials and others about the fit between Professor Suski and the university’s vacancy, the university has decided to go a different direction.”
The university’s current law school dean, Cynthia Nance, will continue to hold that position as planned until June 30, 2026. (Suski would have started July 1, 2026.) Leaders at the university have not yet named another incoming dean.
Law Students Protested, and Law Professors Voiced Their Concern
Law students organized a peaceful, nonpartisan demonstration on campus to call for greater transparency and stronger protections for academic freedom. The protest was covered by local press.
More than 175 law professors also wrote a letter to the University of Arkansas, pushing back against the withdrawn offer. The letter was addressed to Jay B. Silveria, the university’s president, and Indrajeet Chaubey, the school’s provost. It was sent electronically to the Arkansas General Assembly and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and read, “as lawyers and law professors, we are deeply disturbed by the process that yielded this result and its consequences for academic freedom and the full participation of academics in the legal process.”
Emily Suski Is a High-Achieving Law Professor and Associate Dean
Suski is a legal scholar, professor, and the Associate Dean of Strategic and Institutional Priorities at the University of South Carolina’s Joseph F. Rice School of Law. She has extensive expertise in education law, especially Title IX and civil rights in public schools, health and poverty law, and clinical legal education.
Her work explores issues at the intersection of education law and civil rights, and she’s been published in prominent journals, including the Stanford Law Review, Emory Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review. She’s also spoken publicly and been quoted in the news about Title IX.
Professor Suski also founded and is the faculty director of an interdisciplinary medical and legal program called the Carolina Health Advocacy Medicolegal Partnership (CHAMPS). Clients are referred to CHAMPS through their healthcare providers, and then CHAMPS Clinic law students and volunteer attorneys take their cases for free under the guidance of a supervising attorney. The work helps people with SSI, Medicaid, housing conditions, and other issues that affect them. It saves the state of South Carolina approximately $2.1 million in Medicaid costs for the clients it takes in a half-year period.
Suski holds a Master of Laws with honors from Georgetown University Law Center. She holds a Juris Doctor, a Master of Social Work, and a Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of North Carolina.
Suski Had Signed an Amicus Brief in a U.S. Supreme Court Trans Rights Case
Members of the Arkansas state legislature said their concerns with Suski stemmed from her signature on an amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court last year in West Virginia v. B.P.J.
An amicus brief is a legal document submitted to the Court by a person or organization not directly involved in the case. The Latin translation for “amicus” translates to “friend of the court.” Suski was one of 17 legal scholars to sign the West Virginia v. B.P.J. amicus. She did so as a scholar of equal opportunity and antidiscrimination law in support of the respondent trans athlete.
The case relates to a transgender girl named Becky Pepper-Jackson who lives in West Virginia. Becky wanted to join her middle school’s girls’ cross country and track teams. But, when her mom asked if Becky could try out, the school told her no — that she couldn’t due to West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act. Becky took legal action with the help of a national LGBT+ civil rights nonprofit, and the case has reached the United States Supreme Court.
West Virginia v. B.P.J. asked the Court to consider two things:
- First, whether Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prevents a state from consistently designating girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth.
- Second, whether a state violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause when it prohibits transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams.
The amicus brief that Suski signed said, “[a]lthough Title IX does not guarantee a student a right to win or even make the team, supra, it does protect every student from being denied the benefits of school sports based on sex, including sex-based generalizations that do not apply to them.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case on January 13, 2026. The median time to hear the outcome of a Supreme Court case after oral arguments is roughly 15 weeks, so we’ll see where the case lands.
Republicans Threatened to Withhold The University’s Funding If It Hired Suski
One of the lawmakers who objected to Suski’s appointment as dean was Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester, a Republican from Cave Springs, Arkansas. Hester is a real estate agent and former baseball player who has been an Arkansas senator since 2013.
Hester led a group of legislators in threatening to withhold the university’s funding if it hired Suski. However, there’s not much documentation about which legislators were involved or which funding would be withheld. Generally, legislators control the state budget and appropriations, so the implied threats from lawmakers were likely enough to influence the administration.
State Representative Nicole Clowney, a Democratic state representative and adjunct lecturer at the University of Arkansas, posted on social media that a few state elected officials and at least one constitutional officer were involved. She described the situation as “veiled threats and comments behind closed doors.”
Ongoing Political Pressure On Higher Education
This is just the latest example of how politics has been influencing university decisions about faculty hiring. Higher education in the United States is currently under intense scrutiny from the second Trump administration. Texas Senate Bill 37 and similar laws in other states have restructured governance at public universities, giving political appointees greater oversight of curriculum, hiring, and other academic decisions.
Academic freedom at Harvard has also been under the microscope, and many professors there reported that the current administration’s actions have discouraged them from expressing their political views. One Harvard professor, Pippa Norris, writes in her forthcoming book The Cultural Roots of Democratic Backsliding: “The evidence suggests that growing limits on academic freedom are associated with broader processes of backsliding in liberal democracy, evident in many parts of the globe. Equally importantly, legal constraints on academic freedom encourage processes of self-censorship, thereby silencing unorthodox voices, suppressing debate, and weakening viewpoint diversity in higher education.”
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