Versions of Academic Freedom

Versions of Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Stanley Fish

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-10-23

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 022606431X

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Advocates of academic freedom often view it as a variation of the right to free speech and an essential feature of democracy. Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals. Providing a blueprint for the study of academic freedom, Fish breaks down the schools of thought on the subject, which range from the idea that academic freedom is justified by the common good or by academic exceptionalism, to its potential for critique or indeed revolution. Fish himself belongs to what he calls the It s Just a Job school: while academics need the latitude call it freedom if you like necessary to perform their professional activities, they are not free in any special sense to do anything but their jobs. Academic freedom, Fish argues, should be justified only by the specific educational good that academics offer. Defending the university in all its glorious narrowness as a place of disinterested inquiry, Fish offers a bracing corrective to academic orthodoxy."

The Future of Academic Freedom

The Future of Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Louis Menand

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780226520056

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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 Future of Academic Freedom

The Future of Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Henry Reichman

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 142142858X

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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.

Understanding Academic Freedom

Understanding Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Henry Reichman

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-10-05

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1421442159

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"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"--

Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom?

Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom? PDF

Author: Akeel Bilgrami

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-02-10

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0231538790

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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."

For the Common Good

For the Common Good PDF

Author: Matthew W. Finkin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2009-04-21

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0300155549

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This book offers a concise explanation of the history and meaning of American academic freedom, and it attempts to intervene in contemporary debates by clarifying the fundamental functions and purposes of academic freedom in America.--From publisher description.

Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom

Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Robert C. Post

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-01-24

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0300148631

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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.

Academic Freedom in the Wired World

Academic Freedom in the Wired World PDF

Author: Robert O'Neil

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780674033726

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In this passionately argued overview, a longtime activist-scholar takes readers through the changing landscape of academic freedom. From the aftermath of September 11th to the new frontier of blogging, Robert O'Neil examines the tension between institutional and individual interests. Many cases boil down to a hotly contested question: who has the right to decide what is taught in the classroom? O'Neil shows how courts increasingly restrict professorial judgment, and how the feeble protection of what is posted on the Internet and written in email makes academics more vulnerable than ever. Even more provocatively, O'Neil argues, the newest threats to academic freedom come not from government, but from the private sector. Corporations increasingly sponsor and control university-based research, while self-appointed watchdogs systematically harass individual teachers on websites and blogs. Most troubling, these threats to academic freedom are nearly immune from legal recourse. Insisting that new concepts of academic freedom, and new strategies for maintaining it are needed, O'Neil urges academics to work together--and across rigid and simplistic divisions between left and right.

Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom

Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom PDF

Author: Joan Wallach Scott

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 0231548931

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Academic freedom rests on a shared belief that the production of knowledge advances the common good. In an era of education budget cuts, wealthy donors intervening in university decisions, and right-wing groups threatening dissenters, scholars cannot expect that those in power will value their work. Can academic freedom survive in this environment—and must we rearticulate what academic freedom is in order to defend it? This book presents a series of essays by the renowned historian Joan Wallach Scott that explore the history and theory of free inquiry and its value today. Scott considers the contradictions in the concept of academic freedom. She examines the relationship between state power and higher education; the differences between the First Amendment right of free speech and the guarantee of academic freedom; and, in response to recent campus controversies, the politics of civility. The book concludes with an interview conducted by Bill Moyers in which Scott discusses the personal experiences that have informed her views. Academic freedom is an aspiration, Scott holds: its implementation always falls short of its promise, but it is essential as an ideal of ethical practice. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom is both a nuanced reflection on the tensions within a cherished concept and a strong defense of the importance of critical scholarship to safeguard democracy against the anti-intellectualism of figures from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump.

Normative Tensions

Normative Tensions PDF

Author: Kevin W. Gray

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-06-01

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1793620342

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The expansion of Western education overseas has been both an economic success, if the numbers of American, European, and Australian universities setting up campuses in Asia and the Middle East is a measure -- and a source of consternation for academics concerned with norms of free inquiry and intellectual freedom. Faculty at Western campuses have resisted the new satellite campuses, fearing that colleagues on those campuses would be less free to teach and engage in intellectual inquiry, and that students could be denied the free inquiry normally associated with liberal arts education. Critics point to the denial of visas to academics wishing to carry out research on foreign campuses, the sudden termination of employment at schools in both the Middle East and Asia, or the last-minute cancellation of courses at those schools, as evidence that they were correctly suspicious of the possibility that liberal arts programs could exist in those regions. Supporters of the project have argued that opening up foreign campuses brings free inquiry to closed societies, improves educational opportunities for students who would otherwise be denied them, or, perhaps less frequently, that free inquiry will be no more pressured than in the United States or Western Europe. Normative Tensions examines the consequences not only of expansion overseas, but the increased opening of universities to foreign students.