Religious Institutions

Objects of the Inquisition, Or the Trials of Religion Scholars at Catholic Institutions Who Engage with Sexuality Studies

Never talk about politics, religion, sex, or money. That is the advice of Miss Manners for social discourse, as it is for business etiquette. In higher education, it is tantamount to heresy.

Religion, Sectarianism, and the Pursuit of Truth: Reexamining Academic Freedom in the Twenty-First Century

This essay offers a friendly critique of our customary understanding of academic freedom. Focusing on religiously affiliated institutions, Kenneth Garcia considers sectarian obstacles to academic freedom and places academic freedom in historical and theological perspective.

The Dismissal of Ralph Turner: A Historical Case Study of Events at the University of Pittsburgh

In the early 1930s, the University of Pittsburgh found itself in a period of increasing uncertainty about what academic freedom meant. The previous decade had been a time of strenuous struggle between the faculty of the institution and chancellor John Gabbert Bowman with regard to scholarship. Bowman had arrived at the university in 1921 with the perspective that faculty serve institutional and community desires and objectives; as a result, a faculty member’s responsibility to his or her discipline was routinely ignored. By 1934, the university still had not created a workable definition of academic freedom.

 

Biology, Theology, and Academic Freedom: The Challenges of Interdisciplinary Teaching at a Catholic University

Emerging genetic technologies resulting from the Human Genome Project continue to have ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI). This essay will address the challenges of teaching this topic in an interdisciplinary course at a religiously affiliated school, specifically a Catholic university. The article will examine the concept of academic freedom; explore the concept of Catholic identity in higher education; demonstrate how academic freedom and respect for a religious tradition can be achieved through specific pedagogical techniques; and finally, offer some general suggestions for teaching genetics in a religiously affiliated institution.

Boycotts, Bias and Politics in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Response to the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, Volume 4

Academic boycotts are, by their very nature, blunt weapons to be used with extreme caution. When implemented, they silence the open exchange of knowledge, and promote the antithesis of academic freedom. Such extreme measures cannot be justified when casually invoked as part of a cynical political campaign to promote one side in a complex ethno-national or religious dispute.

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