We investigate the evolving nature of academic freedom through the lens of faculty members' lived experiences, examining how integrating DEI and spirituality challenges and enriches traditional conceptualizations of academic freedom in higher education. While extensive research has critiqued neoliberal constraints on academic freedom, less is known about how academics actively resist and transform these limitations. Although DEI initiatives are increasingly central to university missions, their dialectical relationship with academic freedom remains undertheorized. Likewise, the potential contribution of spiritual practices to academic freedom has received limited scholarly attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 academics across global contexts, this research makes three contributions. It develops a comprehensive theoretical framework integrating epistemological, ontological, axiological, and praxiological dimensions for a novel academic freedom conceptualization. This advances beyond traditional rights-based conceptualizations to illuminate how academic freedom operates as a complex ecosystem of knowledge creation, institutional structures, ethical principles, and practical strategies. It demonstrates how DEI initiatives function as mechanisms of institutional transformation by challenging dominant epistemological frameworks and creating new spaces for knowledge production and validation. Finally, it theorizes spiritual practices as collective resources for building academic resilience, moving beyond individualistic conceptions of academic freedom toward understanding it as a form of communal empowerment and resistance. These theoretical advances provide new pathways for understanding how academic freedom operates as a transformative force in higher education while suggesting practical strategies for higher education institutions.
