Zealotry and Academic Freedom
Zealotry and Academic Freedom

Author: Neil Hamilton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1351298828

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Zealotry and Academic Freedom began with the author's personal experience with suppression of academic speech and obstacles to the pursuit of academic quality. Using his own tumultuous experience as a starting point, Hamilton explores how significant efforts to create an autonomous space for academic speech within the university over the past 125 years have been thwarted.Hamilton charges that a fundamentalist academic left in some humanities and social science faculties views the exercise of standards of academic quality and merit-based performance evaluations as tools of oppression and bigotry. Academic zealots ferret out and oppose hidden structures of so-called oppression in our "Eurocentric" culture. Any faculty member overtly supporting academic quality is thus suspected of bigotry and subject to investigations.The opening portion of the book locates similarities with the religious fundamentalism of the nineteenth century in waves of zealotry in American higher education. The first part covers student activism in the 1960s through the emergence of a radical academic left in the early 1990s. The second part examines the meaning of academic freedom and the protection of expression that should be secured. The third and final portion shows how targets of the coercive tactics of the zealots in any period of zealotry can, and have been effectively rebuked, and ultimately overcome.Neil Hamilton's book will generate controversy, particularly the chapters that inquire into the current wave of academic suppression. Hamilton warns that "history instructs that it can happen here." This candid look into the politics of higher education will be gripping reading for all those concerned with the future of education: professors, administrators, students, and parents. There has been a growing literature on this subject, but none cover the legal-political aspects of political correctness with such precision.

Zealotry and Academic Freedom
Zealotry and Academic Freedom

Author: Neil W. Hamilton

Publisher: Transaction Pub

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9781560002055

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Zealotry and Academic Freedom began with the author's personal experience with suppression of academic speech and obstacles to the pursuit of academic quality. Using his own tumultuous experience as a starting point, Hamilton explores how significant efforts to create an autonomous space for academic speech within the university over the past 125 years have been thwarted. Hamilton charges that a fundamentalist academic left in some humanities and social science faculties views the exercise of standards of academic quality and merit-based performance evaluations as tools of oppression and bigotry. Academic zealots ferret out and oppose hidden structures of so-called oppression in our "Eurocentric" culture. Any faculty member overtly supporting academic quality is thus suspected of bigotry and subject to investigations. The opening portion of the book locates similarities with the religious fundamentalism of the nineteenth century in waves of zealotry in American higher education. The first part covers student activism in the 1960s through the emergence of a radical academic left in the early 1990s. The second part examines the meaning of academic freedom and the protection of expression that should be secured. The third and final portion shows how targets of the coercive tactics of the zealots in any period of zealotry can, and have been effectively rebuked, and ultimately overcome. Neil Hamilton's book will generate controversy, particularly the chapters that inquire into the current wave of academic suppression. Hamilton warns that "history instructs that it can happen here." This candid look into the politics of higher education will be gripping reading for all those concerned with the future of education: professors, administrators, students, and parents. There has been a growing literature on this subject, but none cover the legal-political aspects of political correctness with such precision.

The Academic Bill of Rights Debate
The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

Author: Stephen H. Aby

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-08-30

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0313084750

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The Academic Bill of Rights was introduced in 2003 after two decades of conservative critiques of higher education and its faculty. Its goal was to generate legislative initiatives to rein in the tenured radicals who were allegedly dominating higher education and infringing on the academic freedom rights of conservative students. At its root, the debate revolves around some core questions: who should teach, and who has the knowledge and training to hire and evaluate faculty; what knowledge should be taught; and most fundamentally, who should make these decisions? Should it be trained faculty, who are specialists in their fields and who were hired to teach and advance knowledge? Or should it be politicians or outsiders, who may be empowered by legislation to interfere in academic decisions? The academic freedom of faculty, and the independence of higher education, depends on the answers to these questions. This book is the first to bring together a variety of critiques of the Academic Bill of Rights. Furthermore, by including some works by David Horowitz and his critics, as well as websites and a bibliography reflecting various points of view, it gives life to the debate, showing some of the give and take of the arguments. This collection also presents the background on the historical context of academic freedom, showing its fragility and therefore the importance of preserving it. Also featured are some core documents (such as the AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure) that are central to the debates. Some of the conservative critiques of higher education are identified in the selective annotated bibliography chapter. And, case studies of how the ABOR was contested in three states where it was introduced as legislation are also included. Finally, this book attempts to refocus concerns about higher education on the real issue: its growing domination by corporate values and interests, converting higher education from a public good into an increasingly private commodity.

The Lost Soul of Higher Education
The Lost Soul of Higher Education

Author: Ellen Schrecker

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2010-08-24

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1595586032

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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.

Democracy and the Academy
Democracy and the Academy

Author: Robert Weissberg

Publisher: Nova Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9781560727835

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Treatises on democracy in higher education are hardly original undertakings in today's troubled, often acrimonious campus environments. All the "hot button" issues -- racial preferences in admissions, sexual harassment, government funding, multiculturalism, speech codes, even formulating the core curriculum -- sooner or later drag in "democracy". In fact, academic democracy has become a virtual scholarly mini-industry. The authors bring a breath of fresh perspectives to this expansive subject, a collection of analyses written by scholars seldom invited to prestigious conferences dominated by eminent presidents, trustees, provosts, and all the other educational "leaders" who normally define pubic discourse at a safe distance from the classroom. The authors eschew the customary offering of high-sounding speeches, platitudes and rhapsodizing about the democratic role of education, especially well-funded education.

Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship
Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship

Author: Anthony J. Diekema

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0802847560

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The dawning of the third millennium finds many Christian colleges and universities in a search for identity. Coming to grips with the confused, often maligned topic of academic freedom is an essential part of this search. In this volume an unabashed defender of academic freedom offers well-founded advice to an academy that has seemingly lost its way. Drawing on forty years in higher education, including twenty years as president of Calvin College, Anthony Diekema reflects on the extensive scholarly literature on academic freedom against the backdrop of personal experience. He develops the larger philosophical framework necessary for thinking about academic freedom but also offers pointed advice gleaned from specific events and challenges to academic freedom that he has personally confronted. This balanced approach provides a seasoned perspective for those struggling with the subject of academic freedom in their own institutions. In the course of the book Diekema develops a sound working definition of the concept of academic freedom, assesses the threats it faces, acknowledges the significance of worldview in its implementation, and explores the policy implications for its protection and promotion in Christian colleges.

Academic Freedom in Arab Universities
Academic Freedom in Arab Universities

Author: Hanada Taha-Thomure

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13:

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This book is based on a foundational qualitative study that examines the history, meanings and practices of academic freedom at Arab universities. Eight professors who had experience teaching at Arab universities (two of whom are in exile) and one university president were interviewed. Results indicate that Arab higher education is unable to offer quality education, and most Arab students who can afford it, pursue their education in Europe or the United States. A comparison between Western and Arab academic freedom shows a similarity in the understanding of the concept that academic freedom should stem from the more general freedoms allowed in democratic societies. Historically, Arab Muslims enjoyed a great measure of general academic freedom. Presently, however, authoritarian regimes tend to shape Arab higher education and limit academic freedom to a special one that is at times only allowed in certain natural and applied sciences departments. Expectations that Arabs have of their universities include the development and advancement of Arab societies. Those expectations are in conflict with the current practices of academic freedom at Arab universities where professors are fired, tortured and exiled because of the ideas and research that they are involved in.

Academic Freedom Imperiled
Academic Freedom Imperiled

Author: Jimee Dee Kille

Publisher: Shepperson Nevada History

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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The Red scare of the 1950s created a national crisis that challenged concepts of loyalty and freedom of speech in every corner of American society. The crisis was especially problematic in American universities where traditions of academic freedom found themselves at odds with political issues stemming from the Cold War. The University of Nevada in Reno was no exception. students) school offering basic programs to a largely Nevada-based student body in the nation's least-populated state. The campus was quiet, secure traditional and generally conservative. The postwar years brought booming enrollments and new faculty members, many from outside Nevada, imbued with a sense of the importance of research and of shared academic governance. Soon, the university found itself embroiled in an intense controversy that threatened its academic integrity and even raised concerns about its future as a viable institution. The 1952 appointment of Minard W. Stout as president triggered the crisis. Mandated by a conservative Board of Regents to clean up the university, Stout brought to his new job a keen sense of mission and a strident commitment to an authoritarian, top-down chain of command. His subsequent battles with faculty and students over their role in university governance and over the very nature of higher education soon degenerated into angry accusations of faculty. Communist sympathies and bitter confrontations over academic free speech, academic freedom and loyalty. administration of higher education a major issue within Nevada, ultimately involving the state legislature and the courts in an effort to resolve the conflict. J. Dee Kille's lively and insightful account of the crisis on the hill rests on a wide range of archival sources, interviews and oral histories, university records, and published sources. Of vital interest to readers interested in 1950s. Nevada, the book also serves as a powerful case study of the devastating impact of McCarthyism, suspicion, and repression on an American university during this turbulent era in the nation's history.

Academic Ethics
Academic Ethics

Author: Neil W. Hamilton

Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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Academic professionals are expected to restrain self-interest, promote the ideals of public service, and maintain high standards of performance, while society grants the profession autonomy to regulate itself through peer review. Hamilton conveys the need for ethical leadership from within the peer collegium--a leadership that will foster a culture of high aspiration and peer review. This book suggests that the umbrella academic organizations step forward and draft a model code of ethics for the profession of higher education. Further discussion reveals how such attempts become difficult in face of the market's relentless pressure to frame the institution-student relationship in the economic terms of provider and customer. The book also offers an analysis of academic tradition, academic freedom, and the principles of professional conduct and shared governance. Typical problems in academic life are presented, each followed by questions designed to stimulate seminar-type discussion. Appendices contain a proposed code of ethics as well as AAUP statements on the subject.