Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Is The Value Of Value Neutrality? Exploring The Tension Between Objective Scholarship And Activist Scholarship, Julia C. Newman

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

In recent decades there has been an increase in activist scholarship, a specific type of work where scholars seek to generate knowledge and pedagogies that aim to solve issues of inequality through political change. The emergence of activist scholarship poses a challenge to the long-standing ideal of value neutral scholarship and, as a result, universities and academics are grappling with these competing visions of scholarship. Complete value neutrality within scholarship is impossible yet remains a desirable ideal. But in seeking value neutrality the voices of those who have been historically undermined should not have their thoughts dismissed simply because their …

The Battle Over Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion And Critical Race Theory In Florida: A Case Study On The Stop W.O.K.E. Act, Grace Anne Castelin

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Accelerating from 2022 and continuing through 2024, the state of Florida has experienced significant policy changes, particularly within the realm of higher education and affairs of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many progressive officials, experts, and activists assert arguments that the state is on the verge of evolving into an authoritarian regime while many illiberal policies are being produced through the Florida legislature and current executive leadership—social and economic sectors are consequently threatened in order to maintain political oppression. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act has served as a catalyst for shifting the state's political stance on DEI, culminating in a chain …

Let Freedom Read: Exploring Banned Books And Intellectual Freedom In Florida, Christopher M. Jimenez, George Pearson, Melissa Del Castillo, Stephen Thomson Moore, Lowell Bryan Cooper, Jacqueline Radebaugh

Works of the FIU Libraries

On October 5, 2023, the FIU Libraries’ Academic and Intellectual Freedom Committee hosted a crucial discussion on the current state of book banning and censorship in the United States, with a specific focus on Florida. This special session was part of the First Thursdays Library lecture series.

During the event, attendees were presented with startling statistics from the American Libraries Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA OIF), PEN America, the Florida Freedom to Read Foundation (FFTRF), and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that led experts to declare 2022 the worst year for book bans in history. The …

Book Bans, Academic Freedom, And The Academic Law Library: Reflections On An Aall Discussion Den, Olivia Smith Schlinck

Library Staff Online Publications

Discussion Dens are consistently among my favorite programs at the AALL Annual Meeting, and Leslie Street’s Book Bans, Academic Freedom, and the Academic Law Library discussion was truly a highlight of AALL 2023. Street approached this difficult and ever-evolving issue with expertise, passion, and open-mindedness, guiding the group to consider: what can law librarians do to support our colleagues in states facing books bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bases?

The Threat To Academic & Intellectual Freedom, Christopher M. Jimenez, Melissa Del Castillo, Stephen Thomson Moore, Lowell Bryan Cooper, Jacqueline Radebaugh, George Pearson

Works of the FIU Libraries

The Academic and Intellectual Freedom Ad Hoc Committee presented a First Thursday discussion on May 4 about academic and intellectual freedom. Starting with a brief definition of these terms, they traced the history of Academic Freedom and how current events affect us at FIU. The committee posed several real-life scenarios threatening Academic/Intellectual Freedom in libraries. All library staff were invited to attend this lively discussion.

Has Academic Freedom Failed? Can Liberalism Defend It?, Dan Becker

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Patrick Deneen has argued that both the philosophy of liberalism and the principle of academic freedom are fundamentally flawed. In this piece I argue that the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill provides a convincing counterargument to Deneen’s criticisms.

Author information: Dan Becker graduated from Ursinus College in May of 2019 with degrees in philosophy and psychology.

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …

Our Silence Will Not Protect Us . . . And Neither Will J. Edgar Hoover: Reclaiming Critical Race Theory Under The New Mccarthyism, Christina Hsu Accomando, Kristin J. Anderson

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

The right-wing attack against critical race theory is the latest manufactured panic designed to whip up supporters of a party beholden to Donald Trump. Since late 2020, hundreds of measures have been introduced across the U.S. to ban antiracism education, critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and any understanding of racism as systemic and embedded in U.S. history and law. While an understandable reaction of educators is to declare that they are not teaching critical race theory, our position is to reclaim critical race theory for the powerful lens it offers in understanding the history of the U.S., the protracted …

Open Access And Academic Freedom: Teasing Out Some Important Nuances, Rick Anderson

Faculty Publications

Discussion of the ways in which Open Access (OA) and academic freedom interact is fraught for a number of reasons, not least of which is the unwillingness of some participants in the discussion to acknowledge that OA might have any implications for academic freedom at all. Thus, any treatment of such implications must begin with foundational questions. Most basic among them are: first, what do we mean when we say ‘open access’; second, what do we mean when we say ‘academic freedom’? The answers to these questions are not as obvious as one might expect (or hope), but when they …

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

The Undue Cost Of Academic Publishing: Democratizing Information Access, Memo Cordova, Amber Sherman

Amber Sherman

Many scholarly articles that contain research useful to the public are locked behind expensive subscription databases. Coupled with existing publishing and tenure/promotion practices, these contribute to a system that excludes the majority of citizens from accessing current academic findings. However, by publishing academic articles in open access journals instead, faculty at colleges and universities can play an important role in making it easier, and less expensive, for the public, media, and local leaders to read their work. This requires faculty to make different choices and a concurrent shift in how academic departments evaluate faculty publications.

The Undue Cost Of Academic Publishing: Democratizing Information Access, Memo Cordova, Amber Sherman

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many scholarly articles that contain research useful to the public are locked behind expensive subscription databases. Coupled with existing publishing and tenure/promotion practices, these contribute to a system that excludes the majority of citizens from accessing current academic findings. However, by publishing academic articles in open access journals instead, faculty at colleges and universities can play an important role in making it easier, and less expensive, for the public, media, and local leaders to read their work. This requires faculty to make different choices and a concurrent shift in how academic departments evaluate faculty publications.

A Question Of Sources, Michael Foley

Articles

A project designed to record the experiences of participants in the 30-ynears of political unheavel in Northern Ireland has led to debates over academic and jouralistic sources and the right to maintain source anoymity. The interviews with former IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries for the Boston College project has led to a debate about academic freedoms as the PSNi is demanding through the United States Courts access to the confidential material. The legal actin in both the US and the Northern Ireland Courts has raised questions about journalism, academia, the First Amendmet to the US Constitution and relationships between the UK …

Academic Freedom, Intellectual Diversity, And The Place Of Politics In Geography, Reecia Orzeck

Faculty Publications-- Geography, Geology, and the Environment

This paper examines the conservative critique of higher education in the USA. I argue, first, that the right's call for greater “intellectual diversity” in American higher education should be understood as an attack on the professional self-regulation and disciplinary autonomy that are central to academic freedom in this country. Second, I suggest that the right's politicization of politics in the academy brings to light the importance of our developing a vision of the university that accounts for rather than disavows the political nature of the work we do.

Joseph Kinmont Hart And Vanderbilt University: The Rise And Fall Of A Department Of Education, 1930-1934, Deron Boyles

Deron R. Boyles

More cautionary positions are represented in the editorial comments of L.L. Thurstone and W.W. Charters. In 1930, Thurstone wrote in the Journal of Higher Education that academic freedom needed to be guarded. He broadly referred to cases when he argued for a defense of academic freedom by involving the “Association of University Professors” and having the organization effectively censure colleges and universities that encroached on academic freedom. Within his article, however, he noted that his “plan involves no violence in speech or action, and it does not challenge the legal right of the trustees of a university to decide matters …

The Blocked Blog (Or Websense And The Technical Colleges' Fight For Academic Freedom), Carol Stanley, Jerry Stovall

Georgia Library Quarterly

The article provides information on the results of a survey of technical college libraries in Georgia regarding the use of Websense filtering software. The survey was conducted by Jerry Stovall, director of library and media services at South Georgia Technical College in Americus. The objective of the survey is to determine what subject categories are blocked at each institution. The survey results reveal that disparity among the colleges as some colleges block more categories than others, usually depending on the disposition of the information technology staff.

Tenure-Track Or Tenure Trap?, Christopher W. Nolan

Library Faculty Research

When looking at articles written about academic library issues, a reader quickly notices that discussions of faculty status and tenure for librarians have occupied a prominent place. Should librarians be considered faculty when they work for colleges or universities? If so, should they be offered tenure? And if they are offered the chance to achieve tenure, how should they be evaluated? Or are faculty status and tenure things that are irrelevant to the pursuit of librarianship and unnecessary diversions from what we should be most concerned about? These questions have been answered differently at different institutions. When considering a position …

Joseph Kinmont Hart And Vanderbilt University: The Rise And Fall Of A Department Of Education, 1930-1934, Deron R. Boyles

Educational Policy Studies Faculty Publications

More cautionary positions are represented in the editorial comments of L.L. Thurstone and W.W. Charters. In 1930, Thurstone wrote in the Journal of Higher Education that academic freedom needed to be guarded. He broadly referred to cases when he argued for a defense of academic freedom by involving the “Association of University Professors” and having the organization effectively censure colleges and universities that encroached on academic freedom. Within his article, however, he noted that his “plan involves no violence in speech or action, and it does not challenge the legal right of the trustees of a university to decide matters …

Marxist Paradigm And Academic Freedom, Dmitri N. Shalin

Sociology Faculty Research

The Russian October Revolution dealt a devastating blow to Marxism from which Marxist sociology did not begin to recover until recently. Stalin's "contributions" to Marxist theory and practice had a particularly adverse effect on the fate of Marxism in the West. Whatever hopes were generated by the de-Stalinization campaign in the Soviet Union proved short-lived. By the time Soviet tanks entered Prague and Soviet authorities resumed show trials, few intellectuals in the capitalist West could speak of Soviet Marxism without acute resentment or at least tacit embarrassment.

In Mills's words, ". . . marxism-leninism has become an official rhetoric with …

A Comment On Professor Hook's Paper, Julius G. Getman

IUSTITIA

I start with the concession that much of what Professor Hook says is true. Not to recognize this would be folly. Hook's condemnation of academic violence is necessary, justified, and important. Ultimately, however, the picture he draws and the conclusions he states are misleading.

Academic freedom is indeed in jeopardy, but not merely from the internal sources Hook mentions. Outside pressures exist as well. Professor Hook suggests that by establishing a criminal law system, universities can successfully cope with student violence. Having been involved at almost every level of the internal judicial process at the university, I am convinced such …

Editorial: Handcuffs For Teachers; The Dilemma Of The Experimental School Teacher, Rosemary Bliven, Sybil May

69 Bank Street

Volume 2 Number 2, November 1935

Handcuffs for Teachers by Rose Emery Bliven discusses the "concerted attempt that is now being made throughout the United States to control the teacher..."

The Dilemma of the Experimental School Teacher by Sybil May discusses the similar problem private school teachers have with public school teachers in regard to academic freedom.