As colleges and universities deal with challenges to DEI and academic freedom, softening of enrollment, and rising student debt, among other issues, what does the future of higher education look like? This urgent panel will look at how shifts in politics, culture, policy, and economics are impacting American colleges and universities.

• Amelia Jones is a queer feminist theorist and historian of art and performance and Professor in Roski School of Art and Design at USC. Recent publications include Queer Communion: Ron Athey (2021), co-edited with Andy Campbell (accompanying a retrospective of Athey’s work, which she curated); and In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (2021). She is working on a project with Ben Nicholson entitled System Failure and writing a book entitled Against Cultural Capitalism, both of which address the neoliberalism and structural racism of the art world and university, as well as organizing an exhibition of the work of Ken Gonzales-Day, to open at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in 2025.

• Virginia Kuhn, PhD, is a professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a critical media activist. Kuhn joined USC in 2005 after successfully defending one of the first born-digital dissertations, challenging the ethics of visual representation, and promoting the fair use of images as a matter of free speech. She has published several peer-reviewed digital collections and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals. Her books include Shaping the Digital Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities (Open Book Publishers, 2021) and Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies (Parlor Press, 2016).

• LaVonna Blair Lewis’s personal and professional interests consistently focus on equity and inclusion in all aspects of society. As such, she feels she has a twofold mission in life—to make the invisible, visible, and to make people uncomfortable—both of which provide people with an opportunity to grow, as they see through the eyes of others. During her time at USC, she has won several teaching awards and recognition from a broad set of community-based organizations. In all arenas, she is concerned with lifting up authentic voices as a means to generate honest dialogue and engagement as catalysts for change.
• Geoffrey Cowan (moderator) is a lawyer, academic administrator, government official, best-selling author, distinguished professor, nonprofit executive, and Emmy Award-winning producer. After serving as the 22nd director of the voice of America, Cowan served as dean of USC Annenberg from 1996 to 2007. When he stepped down, he was named a university professor, the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership, and the director of USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. He is also on the faculty of USC’s Gould School of Law. In 2010, Cowan became the first president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. As president, he hosted a range of important retreats and three summit meetings with President Barack Obama, including his historic meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in June 2013. Cowan’s books include: See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television, the best-selling The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America’s Greatest Lawyer, and Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary. He also co-wrote the award-winning play, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, and won an Emmy Award as executive producer of the television movie Mark Twain and Me.