Academic Freedom

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 on land home to generations of Arab Palestinians is the contemporary world’s most egregious instance of settler colonialism. This ethnic cleansing, which included the displacement of 750,000 people in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, has engendered one of the longest-standing campaigns of resistance by an occupied people to permanent political and economic subordination by another nation.

Politically inspired boycotts are a powerful form of protest. Free speech, as the US Supreme Court has recognized, includes “the opportunity to persuade to action.” Boycotts are one such opportunity: they aim “to bring about political, social, and economic change” through advocacy, petition, and association with others in a common cause.

This volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom refers extensively to AAUP policy on academic boycotts. At the time that these articles were written, the current AAUP policy was described in the 2006 report On Academic Boycotts. In 2024, a new Statement on...

This essay explores the Kansas Board of Regents’ recently implemented rules addressing “Improper Use of Social Media” and faculty responses to this policy. It focuses on the moderate response that has predominated and the debates about the relationship between the First Amendment and academic freedom.

This essay discusses e-texts in terms of academic freedom, using excerpts from conversations with instructors who have used various e-texts in their classes. These instructors often take a pragmatic approach to the materials but fear losing control of what and how they teach.

This essay examines David Horowitz’s “Academic Freedom” campaign, specifically exploring how “academic freedom,” a narrative that appears alongside “free speech” discourse frequently since September 11, 2001, can be understood as a site of struggle

Like C.P. Snow's two cultures of the humanities and the sciences, a new bimodal view of higher education is becoming increasingly important at the start of the twenty-first century: one that sees the goal of universities as developing "the whole person" and another that sees it as largely or even exclusively in terms of job training.

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.

In this introduction to Volume 6 of the Journal of Academic Freedom, Ashley Dawson introduces articles centered on the issue of electronic communications and academic freedom. The volume examines how changing technologies and the changing professional landscape impact academic freedom.