Understanding Academic Freedom

Understanding Academic Freedom PDF Author: Henry Reichman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442167
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Part of the acclaimed Higher Ed Leadership Essentials series, this book surveys academic freedom's history and its application in today's universities. Academic freedom is once again at the epicenter of the crisis in higher education. A community college instructor in Iowa is pressured to resign after his pro-antifa social media comments garner vicious harassment that administrators find threatening to campus safety. A tenured biology professor at a college on Long Island is threatened with dismissal because she allegedly grades students too strictly. And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a conservative activist calls on his followers to take advantage of online classes to send "any and all videos of blatant indoctrination" to his organization so that it might expose and blacklist "leftist professors." These incidents from the 2019–20 academic year represent only the tip of the iceberg. Academic freedom, long heralded as a core value of American higher education, may now be in as much danger as at any time the 1950s. But what is "academic freedom"? A value upheld for one's supporters (but not one's opponents) when discussing a polarizing controversy? Or a narrow claim of privilege by a professorial elite, immune from public accountability? In this concise and compelling book, Henry Reichman, who chaired the American Association of University Professors' Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure for nearly a decade, mounts a rigorous defense of academic freedom and its principal means of protection: the system of academic tenure. Probing academic freedom's role in multiple contexts, Reichman draws on a wealth of historical and contemporary examples to offer the first comprehensive introduction to the concept in all its manifestations. Elucidating its sometimes complicated meanings, Reichman argues that academic freedom—like its cousin, freedom of speech—cannot easily be defined but, instead, emerges from the contextual application of guiding principles developed and modified over time. He also explores why the rise of contingent faculty employment represents the gravest current threat to academic freedom; reveals how academic freedom is complicated by both fiercely polarized campus environments and the emergence of social media that extend speech beyond the lecture halls of the academy; and touches on the rights of students in and out of class, including treatment of student protest movements.

Understanding Academic Freedom

Understanding Academic Freedom PDF Author: Henry Reichman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442159
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
"This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to academic freedom, surveying its history and application to research, teaching, and public expression, as well as its treatment in the legal arena and its applicability to students"--

Understanding Academic Freedom

Understanding Academic Freedom PDF Author: Henry Reichman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442167
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
Part of the acclaimed Higher Ed Leadership Essentials series, this book surveys academic freedom's history and its application in today's universities. Academic freedom is once again at the epicenter of the crisis in higher education. A community college instructor in Iowa is pressured to resign after his pro-antifa social media comments garner vicious harassment that administrators find threatening to campus safety. A tenured biology professor at a college on Long Island is threatened with dismissal because she allegedly grades students too strictly. And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a conservative activist calls on his followers to take advantage of online classes to send "any and all videos of blatant indoctrination" to his organization so that it might expose and blacklist "leftist professors." These incidents from the 2019–20 academic year represent only the tip of the iceberg. Academic freedom, long heralded as a core value of American higher education, may now be in as much danger as at any time the 1950s. But what is "academic freedom"? A value upheld for one's supporters (but not one's opponents) when discussing a polarizing controversy? Or a narrow claim of privilege by a professorial elite, immune from public accountability? In this concise and compelling book, Henry Reichman, who chaired the American Association of University Professors' Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure for nearly a decade, mounts a rigorous defense of academic freedom and its principal means of protection: the system of academic tenure. Probing academic freedom's role in multiple contexts, Reichman draws on a wealth of historical and contemporary examples to offer the first comprehensive introduction to the concept in all its manifestations. Elucidating its sometimes complicated meanings, Reichman argues that academic freedom—like its cousin, freedom of speech—cannot easily be defined but, instead, emerges from the contextual application of guiding principles developed and modified over time. He also explores why the rise of contingent faculty employment represents the gravest current threat to academic freedom; reveals how academic freedom is complicated by both fiercely polarized campus environments and the emergence of social media that extend speech beyond the lecture halls of the academy; and touches on the rights of students in and out of class, including treatment of student protest movements.

The Future of Academic Freedom

The Future of Academic Freedom PDF Author: Henry Reichman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421428598
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Few issues are as hotly debated or misunderstood as academic freedom. Reichman's book sheds light on and brings clarity to those debates. Winner of the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award by the American Library Association Academic freedom—crucial to the health of American higher education—is threatened on many fronts. In The Future of Academic Freedom, a leading scholar equips us to defend academic freedom by illuminating its meaning, the challenges it faces, and its relation to freedom of expression. In the wake of the 2016 election, challenges to academic freedom have intensified, higher education has become a target of attacks by conservatives, and issues of free speech on campus have grown increasingly controversial. In this book, Henry Reichman cuts through much of the rhetoric to issue a clarion call on behalf of academic freedom as it has been defined and defended by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for over a hundred years. Along the way, he makes it clear that this is the issue of our day. Over the course of ten audacious essays, Reichman explores the theory, history, and contemporary practice of academic freedom. He pays attention to such varied concerns as the meddling of politicians and corporate trustees in curriculum and university governance, the role of online education, the impact of social media, the rights of student protesters and outside speakers, the relationship between collective bargaining and academic freedom, and the influence on research and teaching of ideologically motivated donors. Significantly, he debunks myths about the strength of the alleged opposition to free expression posed by student activism and shows that the expressive rights of students must be defended as part of academic freedom. Based on broad reading in such diverse fields as educational theory, law, history, and political science, as well as on the AAUP's own investigative reporting, The Future of Academic Freedom combines theoretical sweep with the practical experience of its author, a leader and activist in the AAUP who is an expert on campus free speech. The issues Reichman considers—which are the subjects of daily conversation on college and university campuses nationwide as well as in the media—will fascinate general readers, students, and scholars alike.

The Future of Academic Freedom

The Future of Academic Freedom PDF Author: Louis Menand
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226520056
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The essays respond to critics of the university, but they also respond to one another: Rorty and Haskell argue about the epistemological foundations of academic freedom; Gates and Sunstein discuss the legal and educational logic of speech codes. But in the end the volume achieves an unexpected consensus about the need to reconceive the concept of academic freedom in order to meet the threats and risks of the future.

The Lost Soul of Higher Education

The Lost Soul of Higher Education PDF Author: Ellen Schrecker
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595586032
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The professor and historian delivers a major critique of how political and financial attacks on the academy are undermining our system of higher education. Making a provocative foray into the public debates over higher education, acclaimed historian Ellen Schrecker argues that the American university is under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, outside pressure groups have staged massive challenges to academic freedom, beginning in the 1960s with attacks on faculty who opposed the Vietnam War, and resurfacing more recently with well-funded campaigns against Middle Eastern Studies scholars. Connecting these dots, Schrecker reveals a distinct pattern of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any scholarly study that threatens the status quo. At the same time, Schrecker deftly chronicles the erosion of university budgets and the encroachment of private-sector influence into academic life. From the dwindling numbers of full-time faculty to the collapse of library budgets, The Lost Soul of Higher Education depicts a system increasingly beholden to corporate America and starved of the resources it needs to educate the new generation of citizens. A sharp riposte to the conservative critics of the academy by the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, The Lost Soul of Higher Education, reveals a system in peril—and defends the vital role of higher education in our democracy.

Academic Freedom

Academic Freedom PDF Author: Robert J. Ceglie
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1839098848
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Framed in the context of a world in which academic freedom is often jeopardized, or criticized by outside social forces, Academic Freedom: Autonomy, Challenges and Conformation sets out to echo the voices of faculty who have encountered challenges to academic freedom within their personal and professional careers.

It's Not Free Speech

It's Not Free Speech PDF Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443880
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning? The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles—one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion—they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech. In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Bérubé and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Faculty across the nation can develop protocols that account for both the new realities—from the rise of social media to the decline of tenure—and the old realities of long-standing inequities and abuses that the classic liberal conception of academic freedom did nothing to address. This book will resonate for anyone who has followed debates over #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and "cancel culture"; more specifically, it should have a major impact on many facets of academic life, from the classroom to faculty senates to the office of the general counsel.

Academic Freedom and the Telos of the Catholic University

Academic Freedom and the Telos of the Catholic University PDF Author: K. Garcia
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137031921
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
There are currently no books on Catholic higher education that offer a theological foundation for academic freedom. This book presents a theologically grounded understanding of academic freedom that builds on, extends, and completes the prevailing secular understanding for Catholic higher education.

Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom?

Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom? PDF Author: Akeel Bilgrami
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538790
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
In these seventeen essays, distinguished senior scholars discuss the conceptual issues surrounding the idea of freedom of inquiry and scrutinize a variety of obstacles to such inquiry that they have encountered in their personal and professional experience. Their discussion of threats to freedom traverses a wide disciplinary and institutional, political and economic range covering specific restrictions linked to speech codes, the interests of donors, institutional review board licensing, political pressure groups, and government policy, as well as phenomena of high generality, such as intellectual orthodoxy, in which coercion is barely visible and often self-imposed. As the editors say in their introduction: "No freedom can be taken for granted, even in the most well-functioning of formal democracies. Exposing the tendencies that undermine freedom of inquiry and their hidden sources and widespread implications is in itself an exercise in and for democracy."

Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom

Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom PDF Author: Robert C. Post
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300148631
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A leading American legal scholar offers a surprising account of the incompleteness of prevailing theories of freedom of speech. Robert C. Post shows that the familiar understanding of the First Amendment, which stresses the “marketplace of ideas” and which holds that "everyone is entitled to an opinion," is inadequate to create and preserve the expert knowledge that is necessary for a modern democracy to thrive. For a modern society reliably to answer such questions as whether nicotine causes cancer, the free and open exchange of ideas must be complemented by standards of scientific competence and practice that are both hierarchical and judgmental. Post develops a theory of First Amendment rights that seeks to explain both the need for the free formation of public opinion and the need for the distribution and creation of expertise. Along the way he offers a new and useful account of constitutional doctrines of academic freedom. These doctrines depend both upon free expression and the necessity of the kinds of professional judgment that universities exercise when they grant or deny tenure, or that professional journals exercise when they accept or reject submissions.