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From the Editor-Who Welcomes Controversy?
Paula M. Krebs
Our back-to-school issue features controversies about outside speakers and is supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute. Both national and local groups get involved in outside-speaker events—for example, at Brown University, Elliott Colla found himself featured on the Web site Campus Watch for the symposium on Middle East studies he organized on campus. His article explores what happens when critics try to disrupt a campus event. David Keller’s piece describes the attempts of the local citizenry around Utah Valley State College to control not only outside speakers, but also curriculum and faculty hiring and retention. The college, its critics argue, should reflect the political and social values of the area it serves. The college, Keller responds, should be a safe place to ask uncomfortable questions.
Two very different Boston-area institutions have faced outside-speaker controversies recently as well. Boston College’s Jesuit tradition produces one set of religious-political questions in Dale Herbeck’s article about the college’s new speaker policy. A recent speaker at Brandeis, former president Jimmy Carter, raised a different set of issues about religion and politics. Carter’s message about the Middle East caused a stir that needs to be seen in relation to other campus controversies about free expression, as Paul Jankowski explains.
Middle East issues are, of course, a common theme in campuses with outside-speaker controversies, from Columbia to BC and Brandeis. But they’re not limited to the East Coast—Richard Drake fills us in on the repercussions of asking Harvard’s Stephen Walt, whose London Review of Books article(with John Mearsheimer) about the Israel lobby in the United States caused such a firestorm, to speak at the University of Montana.
These outside-speaker controversies are put in a national context by the AAUP’s general counsel, Mary Heen, who explains the implications of universities’ nonprofit status for the question of invited speakers. And this issue includes the AAUP policy statement Academic Freedom and Outside Speakers, which should be an important reference for any controversy on your own campus.
In addition to the articles on outside speakers, this issue examines two sides of the question of the outsourcing of college services. Indiana University’s Patrick Brantlinger discusses the recent moves to privatize services on the sizable IU Bloomington campus. Jerel Wohl, from the University of Pennsylvania, gives a mixed assessment of Penn’s abortive attempt, in the late 1990s, to outsource its facilities services.
Be sure to check out the Nota Bene and AAUP at Work sections of the magazine, as well as the columns and reports. In addition to offering reflections on and investigations of the latest issues in faculty governance and academic freedom across the country, Academe keeps you up to date on the workings of the AAUP itself as it evolves to meet the needs of a changing academic community. Be part of that evolution—get involved in your local chapter, or start one. Reassert the role of the faculty in higher education through the organization dedicated to promoting the rights and advancing the cause of higher education faculty, no matter what discipline or institution. In a climate of increasing surveillance of faculty research and activity, control over faculty choices, and elimination of secure faculty positions, the AAUP becomes increasingly vital. Share an issue of Academe, encourage a friend to join.
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