Amna Khalid

Amna Khalid specializes in modern South Asian history and has a keen interest in intellectual freedom, higher education, and public scholarship.

Born in Pakistan, Khalid completed her Bachelor’s Degree at Lahore University of Management Sciences. She went on to earn an M.Phil. in Development Studies and a D.Phil. in History from the University of Oxford.

Growing up under a series of military dictatorships, Khalid has long been attuned to issues relating to censorship and free expression. She was the inaugural John Stuart Mill Faculty Fellow at Heterodox Academy and is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance.

Khalid has published multiple peer-reviewed articles on academic freedom, free speech, and campus politics. She speaks frequently on these issues at colleges and universities as well as at professional conferences. Her essays and commentaries have appeared in a wide range of outlets, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Republic, and Washington Monthly. Her work has been cited in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other media outlets.

Khalid was a Fellow at the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement during the 2022/2023 academic year, along with her Carleton colleague Jeff Snyder. They focused on threats to academic freedom in Florida, the state at the epicenter of the movement to ban “woke indoctrination” from public school classrooms. Based on interviews Khalid and Snyder conducted with Florida faculty members, they submitted an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs who are challenging Florida’s Stop WOKE Act.

Khalid and Snyder co-host a podcast and accompanying blog called Banished, which explores higher education, free expression, and the culture wars. They are currently writing a book, Academic Freedom: What Everyone Needs to Know, under contract with Oxford University Press.