Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom

By -
We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 14 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, "Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom," invited scholarly articles investigating the links between social power and the historical development and contemporary status of academic freedom. Seeking submissions that would build on volume 13’s focus on legislative interference—particularly with respect to teaching about the history of racism in the United States—we underscored the need to understand the forces intent on undermining academic freedom and the impact such attacks would have on democracy as we know it. Contributions selected for this year's volume document radical changes to the educational landscape and consider the broad implications of such changes, across this country and others. The volume’s fifteen articles explore recurring tensions between landscapes of social power rooted in principles of “power with others” through inclusion and the pursuit of the common good versus those rooted in “power over others” through authoritarian forms of coercion and exclusion. Academic freedom is essential not only to individual academics and their activities as teachers, researchers, and citizens but also to the collective enterprise of higher education as a form of “power with others.” We encourage readers to forward this email to friends and colleagues and to share links to article web pages on social media. You can access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/volume-14 or click on titles in the table of contents below. Please also read the call for papers for next year's volume, "Truth-Telling versus Propaganda—Exposing the Rift." Submissions are due by March 5, 2024. —Michael Dreiling and Pedro García-Caro, Faculty Coeditors

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A REPORT ON THE UVU “FINAL INVESTIGATION REPORT”: THE CASE OF PROFESSOR MICHAEL SHIVELY

By -
This week I read Utah Valley University’s Final Investigative Report on Professor Michael Shively, dated July 31, 2019. With a set of appendices, it is a public  document, filed in a lawsuit against UVU by the family of Professor Michael Shively (Case 2:20-cv-00119-DB-PMW Document 17-1 Filed 03/26/20; Utah Federal District Court).  I discuss the Report here because it reveals serious flaws in a procedure that should afford due process to members of the faculty while also enabling the University to dismiss faculty when there is proven cause. A UVU Faculty Senate Committee, of which I am a member, is currently writing a new policy on “Faculty Remediation, Sanction, and Dismissal for Cause.” Mistakes made in the Shively case can help us as we develop guidelines that are more reasonable than those in the earlier policy and more conducive to a mutual sense of trust and collegiality. Professor Shively passed away on August 19, 2019, never having seen this report that discounts ma
Read more

Statement on the Suspension of Professor Mike Shively at UVU

By -
Image
Mike Shively training on the San Marcos River for the 2019 Texas Water Safari (courtesy of the Shively family) Our colleague, Professor Michael Shively, passed away on the evening of August 19, 2019. Mike joined the UVU faculty in 1992 with advanced degrees in anatomy and veterinary science. He served as President of the Faculty Senate and as Department Chair. He was the Faculty Athletic Representative, a role he relished as he played his trumpet at many athletic events. Over the course of his teaching career he taught thousands of students in his anatomy and physiology classes and was honored with numerous teaching awards. Students found his demanding classes key components for admission into medical, dental, and nursing schools.  Although “Rate My Professors” is an imperfect source, it is informative to see what students posted there about Mike’s anatomy class. Five recent, representative examples:  AWSOME, 5 out of 5 rating Anatomy is the hardest class you will prob
Read more

Begging the DEI Question

By -
On January 19, House Republicans voted to pass HB 261, Rep Katy Hall’s diversity, equity, and inclusion bill. Their votes suggest that they did not pay attention to Andy Larsen’s thoughtful analysis of the issue (Salt Lake Tribune, January 13): “One of the most popular anti-DEI studies is full of problems.” Or perhaps they were simply more interested in the politics of the issue than in careful analysis in the service of Utah’s students.  Larsen writes that the question the bill purports to answer is what to do with the “DEI bloat in academia,” as reported by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2021 (and in a flurry of subsequent pieces there). After pointing out serious methodological problems in the report (“it’s an insane way to draw conclusions”), Larsen concludes his analysis: “In the end, the anti-DEI folks have a problem: Their argument just isn’t that well-considered. They’re using shoddy methodology [and] they don’t address the research that led to DEI programs in the fi
Read more