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Public debates on academic freedom have become increasingly contentious, and understandings of what it is and its purposes are contested within the academy, policymakers and the general public. Drawing on rich empirical interview data, this book critically examines the understudied relationship between academic freedom and its role in knowledge production across four country contexts - Lebanon, the UAE, the UK and the US - through the lived experiences of academics conducting 'controversial' research. It provides an empirically-informed transnational theory of academic freedom, contesting the predominantly national constructions of academic freedom and knowledge production and the methodological nationalism of the field. It is essential reading for academics and students of the sociology of education, as well as anyone interested in this topic of global public concern. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Universities have been propelled into the center of the global political economy of knowledge production by a number of factors: mass education, academic capitalism, the globalization of knowledge, the democratization of communication in the era of the Internet, and the emergence of the knowledge and innovation economy. The latest book in the International Studies in Higher Education series, Universities and the Public Sphere addresses the vital role of research universities as global public spheres, sites where public interaction, conversation and deliberation take place, where the nature of the State and private interests can be openly debated and contested. At a time of increased privatization, open markets, and government involvement in higher education, the book also addresses the challenges facing the university in its role as a global public sphere. In this volume, international contributors challenge prevalent views of the global marketplace to create a deeper understanding of higher education's role in knowledge creation and nation building. In nearly every national context the pressures of globalization, neo-liberal economic restructuring, and new managerial imperatives challenge traditional norms of autonomy, academic freedom, access and affordability. The authors in Universities and the Public Sphere argue that universities are uniquely suited to have transformative democratic potential as global public spheres.
Academic freedom-the institutional autonomy of scientific, research and teaching institutions, and the freedom of individual scholars and researchers to pursue controversial research and publish controversial opinions-is a cornerstone of any free society. Today this freedom is under attack from the state in many parts of the world but it is also under question from within academe. Bitter disputes have erupted about whether liberal academic freedoms have degenerated into a form of coercive political correctness. Populist currents of political opinion are questioning the price a society pays for the freedom of its `experts' and professors. This volume summarizes the highlights of the discussions of international experts and political figures who examined the state of academic freedom world-wide at a gathering in the summer of 2017. Topics range widely, from the closing of universities in Turkey and the narrowing space for academic freedom in Hungary, China and Russia, to the controversies about free speech roiling American campuses. The book contains thoughtful historical analysis of the origins of the ideal of academic freedom; eloquent testimony from the front lines of the battle to defend the academy as a free space for controversial thought; as well as analysis of how university autonomy and self-government are endangered by hostile political forces around the world.
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.
This publication is based on the discussions of the 2004 Global Colloquium on Research and Higher Education Policy of the UNESCO Forum for Higher Education, Research and Knowledge, held in Paris in December 2004. It contains contributions from 17 international experts in the field of higher education which explore the global rise of the 'knowledge society' and its implications for higher education and for sustainable human development in the future.
Universities Are Changing Around The World. In China and Africa there is massive expansion, while many of America's greatest public universities are experiencing major budget cuts. In Latin America universities have been affected by dictatorships and privatization but are now growing in ways central to economic development. In Europe universities built as state institutions are being told to raise more money from private sources and are being reorganized so they will compete better in global rankings. In this context clarity about the public mission of universities is vital, yet it is lacking both outside and inside academia. When universities educate students, is this simply a private benefit because it advances their careers? Or is it a public good because informed citizens are integral to democracy and essential for national economic development? How important is equal opportunity? What are the effects of hierarchy? Who pays now and who will pay tomorrow? Should the results of academic research be private property for sale or openly available for public use? Who sets the university research agendas? What kinds of scholarship flourish and what kinds suffer? Should producing competitive research take priority over educating competent students? Do international rankings distort these and other university priorities or provide needed objective assessments? What are the university's roles and responsibilities in terms of knowledge creation and dissemination today? And tomorrow? In this collection, scholars report from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. They confront the realities and challenges of higher education as it is torn between multiple public and private agendas. This comparative perspective illuminates both the continuing importance of the university's public mission and the pressing need to clarify it. Diana Rhoten is the founder and director of the Knowledge Institutions Program and the Digital Media and Learning Project at the Social Science Research Council. She has published in a range of academic journals and advises cultural, scientific, and educational institutions on issues of organizational design, creative collaboration, and adaptive change. Craig Calhoun is president of the Social Science Research Council and University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University. He has served in a variety of academic leadership positions, including as a dean, and has conducted research in many international settings. His most recent book is an edited collection, Robert K Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (Columbia).
Dirty Knowledge explores the failure of traditional conceptions of academic freedom in the age of neoliberalism. While examining and rejecting the increasing tendency to view academic freedom as a form of free speech, Julia Schleck highlights the problem of basing academic freedom on employment protections like tenure at a time when such protections are being actively eliminated through neoliberalism’s preference for gig labor. The argument traditionally made for such protections is that they help produce knowledge “for the public good” through the protected isolation of the Ivory Tower, where “pure” knowledge is sought and disseminated. In contrast, Dirty Knowledge insists that academic knowledge production is and has always been “dirty,” deeply involved in the debates of its time and increasingly permeated by outside interests whose financial and material support provides some research programs with significant advantages over others. Schleck argues for a new vision of the university’s role in society as one of the most important forums for contending views of what exactly constitutes a societal “good,” warning that the intellectual monoculture encouraged by neoliberalism poses a serious danger to our collective futures and insisting on deliberate, material support for faculty research and teaching that runs counter to neoliberal values.
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."
Essays on the challenges to academic freedom posed by post-9/11 political interventions and the growing commercialization of knowledge. Are the attacks on academic freedom after 9/11 a passing storm, or do they represent a structural shift that undermines one of the pillars of democratic societies? This book brings together some of this nation's leading scholars to analyze the challenges to academic freedom posed by post-9/11 political interventions and the market-driven commercialization of knowledge, examining these issues in light of the major transformations in the system of higher education since the Second World War, including conflicting interpretations of what constitutes academic freedom. Following an analysis of the historical significance of the post-9/11 threats to academic freedom, three strongly argued and not easily reconcilable essays by Robert Post, Judith Butler, and Philippa Strum discuss what visions of academic freedom can be defended and the best strategies for doing so. Three case studies--Kathleen J. Frydl on the loyalty-oath and free-speech controversies at the University of California, Amy Newhall on the tortured relationship between universities and the government as seen in language acquisition programs, and Joel Beinin on the policing of thought in the academy in relation to the Middle East--deepen our understanding of what is at stake. In clear and powerful prose, these essays provide a solid platform for informed classroom and public discussions on the philosophical foundations, institutional practices, and political dimensions of academic freedom on the threshold of the twenty-first century.
This book investigates and critically interprets the underrepresentation of the global South in global knowledge production. The author analyses the serious bias towards scholars and institutions from this region: he argues that this phenomenon causes serious disadvantages not only for authors and institutions, but global science as well by impeding the flow of fresh, innovative scholarship. This book uses a combination of field theory and world-systems analysis to explain the motives and dynamics behind the geopolitical and societal inequalities in the system of global knowledge production. Subsequently, the author offers several solutions by which these inequalities could be reduced, or even eliminated. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of knowledge inequalities, and knowledge production in the global South. “Márton Demeter’s monograph invokes rich anecdotal, empirical and scientometric evidence to delineate the contours of a world system that preserves the dominance of Western knowledge and scholars and the westernisation or peripheralisation of the rest – a system defined by geopolitical and material inequalities, socio-economic class differences, institutional elitism and publishing biases. Demeter’s work counters narratives that present academia as meritocratic and that justify disparities in world publications on the basis of pure rigour, exposing rather norms and values that perpetuate a western elitist system and peripheralise those who happen to lack this cultural capital. Demeter’s work adds to an expanding field of research documenting how Anglophone standards and biases in journal indexing, peer review and editorial board recruitment marginalise consistently the Global South. His practical and concrete suggestions to subvert this system of horizontal and vertical inequalities could not be timelier and provides momentum to decolonisation movements in higher education across the world.” —Dr Romina Istratii, SOAS University of London, UK “Márton Demeter is a scholar dedicated to revealing the inequality in academic publishing and a strong advocate for scholars from the Global South. This book is an epitome of his effort on this cause. Demeter utilizes his wealth of data including authorships, citations, journal publishers, editorial review board compositions, the reviewers and the editors of journals as strong evidence of inequality with his three-dimensional model of academic stratification. This book is a must-read for scholars both in the Global North and the Global South to reflect on the current state of academic knowledge gatekeeping and production. It will spark a dialogue between scholars to address the dominance of the Global North especially in the field of communication.” —Professor Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University, USA “Márton Demeter’s analysis and critique of the unequal structure of global knowledge production is a powerful contribution to the global justice movement with dramatic implications for what academics in both the Global North and the Global South can do to help science and the humanities live up to their claims of meritocracy and universality. Demeter employs a useful critical combination of the world-systems perspective and Bourdieusian field theory to organize the results of his careful and sophisticated empirical studies of global knowledge production. He is an intrepid protagonist of a more egalitarian human future.” —Professor Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California, Riverside, USA