Samuel J. Abrams

Samuel J. Abrams is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on questions of related civic and political culture and American ideologies. He is concurrently a professor of politics and social science at Sarah Lawrence College, and a faculty fellow with New York University’s Center for Advanced Social Science Research and a visiting scholar at the Sutherland Institute in Utah. Dr Abrams is actively involved with the Theodore Roosevelt Library and Foundation as well as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Dr. Abrams is the author of several books on a variety of topics including public opinion, Congress, religion and society, and polarization. His scholarly articles have been featured in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, The Jewish Journal, and PS: Political Science & Politics. He is presently working on two book projects exploring partisanship, polarization, and society and Gen Z on college campuses. 

Dr. Abrams has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an alumnus of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Program on Inequality and Social Policy. He received his A.B. in political science and sociology from Stanford University. He is happy to cheer on the Mets and visits the comic shop every Wednesday.

In 2018, Abrams wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized student affairs administrators and identified political bias, at university mid-level administration at Sarah Lawrence for organizing “many overtly progressive events…without offering any programming that offered a meaningful ideological alternative.” Soon after, his office door was vandalized. Sarah Lawrence’s president released a weak statement affirming academic freedom and Abrams’s “every right” to publish and pursue his work.

In 2019, a student group called the Diaspora Coalition occupied a campus building and published a list of demands in the student newspaper. These demands included that “Abrams’s position at the college be put up to tenure review to a panel of the Diaspora Coalition and at least three faculty members of color.” In addition, the group demanded that the college issued a statement condemning the “harms that Abrams has caused to the college community” and that Abrams issue a public apology.

For his independent academic analysis and courage, the Columbia Academic Freedom Council is honored to present Prof. Samual Abrams with the 2025 Academic Freedom Award.