Symposium

American education is at a crossroads. Long-held assumptions about what education is, who it is for, and how it should be governed are being reexamined across doctrinal, institutional, and political lines in a time of deep governmental distrust. And courts, legislatures, schools, families, students, and teachers alike are grappling with competing narratives about education. Is it a public good or a private choice? A site of democratic formation or free-market system? A prospective vehicle for equity or for individual  advancement?

This Symposium, free to attend, convenes leading education-law scholars to examine this moment of transition. It will interrogate how law structures educational opportunity, authority, and identity at a time when the foundational premises of education are being questioned. And as legal and political pressure is increasingly brought to bear on schools, institutions, and educators, it will also be attentive to what has become of the teaching profession and the institution of education itself.