One measure of the fragile state of many democracies is the way in which public universities have come under attack around the world. A new monthly podcast series, produced as part of the Global Democracy Commons project, seeks to address the myriad forces seeking to foreclose public universities as spaces of critique and democratic protest across the globe.   The series explores diverse trends such as related to the defunding of higher education; its redefinition as a private not a public good; the increasing authoritarian nature of university management; the use of culture wars and discourses of civility to police classrooms; the waves of layoffs and closures of departments and programs; and the attempts to delimit academic freedom, free speech, and rights of assembly and protest.   We hope our conversations with those who work in higher education around the world will allow us to consider the degree to which the university has become the canary in the coal mine for the fate of democracy. Episode 1: Understanding Academic Freedom: Interview with Hank Reichman To mark the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, and the introduction of new restrictions on protests at the University of California and at over a 100 campuses across the U.S., our first podcast explores the relationship of free speech and academic freedom to the fragile history of democracy in America over the past century.    James Vernon, Director of the Global Democracy Commons, talks to Hank Reichman, Professor Emeritus at Cal State East Bay and a former AAUP vice-president who chaired its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure for almost a decade, from 2012-2021. A new edition of his last book, Understanding Academic Freedom, will be out in Spring 2025.   A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/hank-reichman.