2023-2024 Class of Fellows

Susan Balter-Reitz is a Professor of Communication at Montana State University Billings. Balter-Reitz has been studying the limits of the First Amendment for the last 30 years, and she has published broadly on issues related to Freedom of Expression. Her work is informed by argumentation theory and conceptions of the public. Balter-Reitz has twice been nominated for the Franklyn Haiman award given by the National Communication Association to honor distinguished scholarship in Freedom of Expression; the work she collaborated on with Michael Bruner won this award in 2015.

Michael Lane Bruner (a.k.a. M. Lane Bruner) is Professor of Communication Studies and Affiliate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a well-established reputation for research in freedom of speech and civic engagement. Bruner’s work in these areas, spanning more than two decades, focuses primarily on legal rulings and legislation that appear on the surface to protect and expand free speech and citizen engagement when in fact they undermine the very public reason upon which sound legal and policy decisions are based. Bruner also ensures that his work on responsible public speech and civic engagement is applied. To that end, he teaches policy development and communication to policy professionals at the doctoral level and collaborative debate at the undergraduate level.

Over the last decade, Balter-Reitz and Bruner have been concerned with the attacks on public colleges and universities under the guise of protecting free expression. Examples include their 2011-2012 work, on the Westboro Baptist Church’s influence on Supreme Court rulings related to free speech and public spectacle, their 2016-2017 research on the cynical manipulation of university free speech rules by provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulous, and their most recent work on the passage of FORUM Acts in the United States presented at the National Communication Association Conference in 2022.

Kaleb L. Briscoe, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Adult and Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she joined the faculty in August 2023. She previously served as an assistant professor of Higher Education Leadership at Mississippi State University.

Her work utilizes critical theories and methods to describe structural inequities within organizations. Her research more broadly speaks to understanding issues of race, racism, and racialized incidents at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Additionally, her work seeks to understand administrators, explicitly university presidents’ responses to race and racism, by challenging their use of anti-blackness and non- performative rhetoric. She uses qualitative methodological approaches such as narrative inquiry, case study, and critical race methodology to understand these essential issues in postsecondary education spaces. Dr. Veronica Jones Baldwin and Dr. Briscoe received a Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant for their project Resistance or Racism? Unpacking Critical Race Theory Bans in a Sociopolitical Era of Anti-Racism. This two-part project: (1) analyzes the language used in current legislation banning CRT; and (2) captures the narratives of faculty that use CRT in their teaching, research, and service to understand how they navigate the political climate/recent legislative attempts to ban CRT. Ultimately, this work has the potential to shape higher education policy, influencing how institutional actors adapt to the political climate while advancing anti- racist practices.

Her work has also challenged how administrators and students treat staff members in higher education and student affairs, explicitly her project on “Student Affairs Professionals’ Experiences with Campus Racial Climate at PWIs” has garnered national recognition and grants with ACPA-College Student Educators International and NASPA– Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. This scholarship advances the argument that without accounting for how hostile campus racial climates negatively affect SAPs, there will be a status quo mentality when addressing racialized incidents. Through this work, Dr. Briscoe has also advanced arguments on how race and politics, including the severity of the political climate faced during the Trump administration, has complicated student affairs professionals’ roles in higher education. She has also taught undergraduate and graduate classes on Higher Education Environments, Diversity, Globalization, and the College Student, Critical Race Theory in Education, Race, Racism, and Racialized Incidents in Higher Education, all of which inform this proposed project. Finally, Dr. Briscoe has previously served as a mid-level student affairs professional overseeing student involvement, diversity, and multicultural affairs.

Eliza is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin studying liberatory education policy and law-based threats to free expression and inclusion. She is drawn to inquiry projects that ask questions about educational purpose and ground themselves in deep praxis. One recent study tracked the stewardship of four secondary Ethnic Studies courses from local, district-level design along their journey to inclusion within Texas’s state-level Social Studies course offerings. Guided by interviews with policymakers, scholars, activists, and district staff, as well as document analysis and observations of public hearings, this critical qualitative case study observed the viability of state-level policy institutionalization for radically rooted Ethnic Studies projects. She found that Ethnic Studies policy design requires a relational praxis and that the theories, epistemologies, and disciplinary knowledge of study participants inform their strategic engagement with the state and the coloniality of schooling. A current project also looks at the relationship between public education and the state, observing the ways that threats to free expression impact public higher education faculty whose work is focused on racial equity and inclusion. This project aims to inform university actors and external allies about strategies to resist attacks on academic freedom and to foster authentically inclusive campus climates.

Before entering academia, Eliza spent a decade as a film editor in Los Angeles, crafting commercials, documentary films, trailers, and other visual content. She continues this work today, recently serving as a consulting producer on the critically acclaimed 2022 documentary The Business of Birth Control. Eliza carried her creative career knowledge into her role as a high school English teacher and track and field coach at a Southern California high school where she engaged in relational learning–working in the classroom and running alongside her students.

For the last seven years, she has rooted herself in the Austin, TX while completing her doctoral studies, volunteering for Academia Cuauhtli, a culturally revitalizing Saturday school/third space; co- founding and serving as a core organizer for the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, a grassroots community working in solidarity to expand Ethnic Studies courses; spending hundreds of hours in the Capitol, Austin City Council, school board meetings, and at the State Board of Education advocating for humanizing and liberatory public education and public spaces; and planting the seeds for a community run Equity Collective at her children’s school. Her work has been published in top tier journals, but she is most happy when her 9-year-old reads it and asks questions (though frequently it’s more of a comment...)

Eliza holds an MA in Social Science and Comparative Education from UCLA; a Secondary Teaching Credential from Cal State Northridge; and a BA in Spanish and History from Rutgers University, as well as enrolling in a number of community college courses. While she spent 9th-12th grade at a private boarding school, she is dedicated to protecting and cultivating public education. While she truly wants the best for her own kids, she strives to live in ways that build the best future for all children.

I am an Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Broadly, my work considers the role that higher education fulfills in society. In terms of specific topics, I write about educational policy issues, racial equity issues, as well as academic freedom, student speech issues, and civic engagement. When I write about civic engagement, I empirically examine specific curricular or co-curricular experiences that influence political efficacy, voter information, voter registration, and voter turnout.

Dr. Flores is proud to be a lifelong product of the California public education system, from K- 12 to her PhD in Urban Planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is an Associate Professor at California State University Long Beach in the interdisciplinary master’s program in Equity, Education & Social Justice. In this role, she trains students as emerging scholars and practitioners focused on justice, power, and resistance. She draws on current and community events to anchor academic ideas in everyday life and uses critical pedagogies to engage students in deep analyses of social and educational inequities from the local to the global.

In her research, Dr. Flores studies sex and gender-based harassment experienced online, in public spaces, and at academic conferences. Her contributions explore a range of topics including gendered public space, street harassment, Title IX, and the targeted harassment of faculty by members of the public. She is committed to public scholarship and civic engagement, and in her previous research as a Fellow with the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement she examined the ways in which targeted harassment may silence faculty, leading to self-censorship. Most recently, she completed a sex educator certification, noting the urgent need for accurate, non-shaming, justice-based sex education programming as a component of campus sexual assault prevention efforts.

Dr. Flores is a past fellow with The OpEd Project and her public writing has been featured in national outlets such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine Blog, YES! Magazine and Progressive Planning Magazine. Before returning to academia, Dr. Flores worked as a political messaging strategist and jury consultant, conducting focus group research for legal cases and political campaigns in more than thirty states.

I received my doctorate in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Connecticut, and then completed postdoctoral training at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. I have been an Assistant Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development since 2016. My work has focused on positive development among adolescents and young adults; More specifically, much of my research has addressed the civic-related experiences of college students, including identifying patterns of participation in different types of actions (Johnson et al., 2014), types of life goals that support civic engagement (Johnson et al., 2018), and the relationship between dimensions of efficacy and participation in different types of civic actions (Gee & Johnson, 2022). I have also done research with adolescents related to their general role models (Johnson et al., 2016; Hammond et al., 2022). Although my work has primarily been quantitative in nature, several projects have involved in-depth interviews (e.g., Hershberg & Johnson, 2019), which I am excited to use again in this project.

Alex Kappus brings over 15 years of leadership experience in higher education, serving in a variety of institutional contexts in four different states and in several student development functional areas including residence life, new student and family programs, financial aid, leadership development, and student success. He currently serves as the Account Executive for Student Success with Credo Higher Education Consulting where he champions student success through the firm’s signature student retention initiative Moving the Needle. In his previous role as Senior Director for Student Success at NC State, he served on the university’s Pack the Polls Coalition, where he and his colleagues proposed, designed, and launched the 2022 Civic Education Challenge, a campus-wide effort to champion civic engagement.

A devoted scholar-practitioner, Alex’s research and scholarly writing focus on college students' nonpartisan political engagement and assessment of programs and services in higher education. His dissertation examined the lived experiences of college students involved in nonpartisan political engagement through the Campus Vote Project (campusvoteproject.org) during the 2020 election season. His expertise in nonpartisan political engagement in higher education is particularly relevant to advancing civic engagement which is increasingly scrutinized as a partisan political issue instead of one core to the civic mission of colleges and universities. He received a Ph.D. in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education from Michigan State University, an M.Ed. in College Student Affairs Administration from the University of Georgia, and a B.A. in Political Science from Emory University.

Raquel M. Rall is an Associate Professor and Faculty Chair in the School of Education at UC Riverside. Before her appointment at UCR, she was a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Southern California (USC). She has a Ph.D. in urban education policy from USC and degrees in Human Biology and African and African American Studies from Stanford. Her research centers postsecondary leadership and governance. Of particular interest to Rall is research that helps further illuminate the centrality of concepts like equity, diversity, and inclusion in postsecondary decision-making. With her research, teaching, and service, Rall centers equity-mindedness to push issues of leadership and decision-making from the periphery to the core to better understand how the decisions and decision-makers impact outcomes in higher education. At UCR, she teaches courses like Critical Issues in Higher Education, Higher Education Governance, and Black Brilliance Matters. At the system level, she serves on the UC Black Administrator’s Council and is the inaugural convener of the UC Online Advisory Council. She was recently tenured in the UC Riverside School of Education—the first Black woman to do so in the School of Education.

Rall has presented her work at national conferences such as the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Council of Education, and the Association of Governing Boards. The Spencer Foundation, the College Futures Foundation, and the Gates Foundation have funded her research. She has published in academic journals such as the Journal of Negro Education, Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and the Journal of Higher Education.

Rall is also an engaged community leader. She is active on school site councils, parent-teacher associations, and nonprofit organizations. Rall is a board member for the Council of African American Parents and is the program director for the Black Community Education Promise Program. The connections she has made on campuses and beyond help her to understand the breadth and reach of personal relationships and how those relationships can change the trajectory of individuals and communities. Additionally, in the opportunities she has had interacting with leaders, she has noted that many are left out of pivotal discussions and decisions. Fittingly, Rall proposes a project that maps the reach of civic engagement of key decision-makers in higher education. Rall is a national expert whose work on decision-making and equity is advancing higher education in novel ways. The project aims delineated in this submission would continue to move the knowledge and understanding of the understudied yet critical topic of governance to center stage in higher education.

Ashley N. Robinson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Sammartino School of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Leadership and Education Policy from the University of Connecticut and with an M.Ed. in Student Development in Higher Education and a B.A. in English, both from the University of Maine. Prior to pursuing an academic career, she worked professionally in higher education for six years in residential life and housing. Her work is strongly informed by both her experience as a student affairs educator and her background as an academic labor organizer.

Dr. Robinson’s research focuses on examining higher education policies and practices to understand new possibilities for leaders and educators to create more just and equitable organizations and institutions. Dr. Robinson uses critical qualitative methods to center frontline administrators’ and students’ experiences with institutional policies and practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. She works primarily in the scholarly areas of critical study of whiteness and institutional ethnography. Dr. Robinson has published several articles and book chapters in outlets including the Journal of Critical Studies in Education, the Journal of College Student Development, and About Campus and has presented her emerging research widely at conferences such as NASPA, ACPA, ASHE, and AERA.