Freedom of speech—academic and political

Freedom of speech is central to bourgeois society. But it is often under assault, and it falls to the Left to defend it. It is being undermined in Israel, especially now that the Boycott Bill has been passed. As Neve Gordon explains, Ironically, the bill itself is likely to be inconsequential. It stipulates that any [...]

Don’t cry for us, Argentine

We’ve come to this: watching the Argentine chancellor of the University of California playing a faux proletarian and crying on the reality show “Undercover Boss.” Toby Miller, one of his employees, uses the pitiful display as a teachable moment: Our CEO cried about personal loss. He cried about student debt. He almost cried about putting [...]

Take the money and run

The Harvard Boys took it from Saif Qaddafi, and they were only too willing to do his bidding. The most ambitious courtier was the Monitor Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, consultancy that assists countries with economic reform. Co-founder ­Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, began traveling to Tripoli to meet with Saif, bringing with [...]

Restricting academic freedom

Stanely Fish wants to restrict the meaning of academic freedom—and then sweep everything else under the rug. I actually have no problem with Fish’s restricted definition of academic freedom. The pursuit of truth is what is done in classrooms and laboratories and that is why those activities should be protected from outside interference. Truth cannot [...]

In defense of democracy

As the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa are now demonstrating, creating democratic institutions involves a lot of hard work. So, as it turns out is defending democracy, especially when those in power are willing to sell it or legislate it away. It’s certainly going to take a lot of hard work to [...]

In defense of academic freedom

Academic freedom is currently under attack in Wisconsin and Michigan because of right-wing requests to examine faculty email messages. Daniel Little sounds the alarm against this “alarming intrusion into the zone of academic and personal freedom of the faculty member,” which threatens to create a chilling effect on the faculty member’s ability to freely communicate [...]

Academic freedom: uneven developments

Right now, academic freedom is being contested in the United States, especially in public universities. In some cases, it’s winning; in others, it’s losing. It won recently at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. In a ruling that breaks from other recent federal court decisions chipping away at [...]

In defense of academic freedom

The University of Wisconsin has decided to comply with the request from the Republican Party of Wisconsin seeking access to history professor William Cronon’s emails—but only after winnowing the database. And only after issuing a statement in defense of academic freedom: Scholars and scientists pursue knowledge by way of open intellectual exchange. Without a zone [...]

Debating affirmative action in South Africa

The University of Cape Town is debating whether or not an “elitist version of race-based affirmative action” in admissions is useful in overcoming the legacy of apartheid and creating a new, more just South Africa. The debate, itself, as discussed in the New York Times, is certainly not unusual. What is unusual—and commendable—is that the [...]

Destroying the university

In his latest book, Mark C. Taylor has set out a plan to save the university—by destroying it. Apparently (according to the review by David A. Bell), Taylor has turned his short, execrable op-ed piece into a full-length book, Crisis on Campus. The original essay was based on fragile logic and thin evidence. And the [...]