Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era

by Carvalho, Edward J.; Downing, David B.

• ISBN13: 9780230117006
• ISBN10: 0230117007
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Since 9/11 there have been many startling instances where the rhetoric of national security and terror, corporate interests, and privatization have cast a pall over the terrain of academic freedom. In the post-9/11 university, professors face job loss or tenure denial for speaking against state power, while their students pay more tuition and fall deeper in debt. This timely collection features an impressive assembly of the nation's leading intellectuals, addressing some of the most urgent issues facing higher education in the United States today. Spanning a wide array of disciplinary fields, Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Eraseeks to intervene on the economic and political crises that are compromising the future of our educational institutions.

Author Biography

Edward J. Carvalho is Instructor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (2007) and the poetry audiobook Chants from the Seven Cities (2009). He is also the founding editor of The Acknowledged Legislator and guest editor for David B. Downing's Works and Days journal on Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University (2008-09). David B. Downing is Professor of English and Director of the Graduate Programs in Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Knowledge Contract: Politics and Paradigms in the Academic Workplace (2005) and the editor or coeditor of four other books, including Beyond English, Inc.: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy (2002). Since 1984 he has edited the scholarly journal Works and Days, which publishes biannually.

Table of Contents

Reframing Academic Freedom--Edward J. Carvalho & David B. Downing * PART I: STATE OF THE UNION * Academic Unfreedom in America: Rethinking the University as a Democratic Public Sphere--Henry A. Giroux * Barefoot in New Zealand: The Politics of Campus Conflict--Cary Nelson * Marketing McCarthyism: The Media’s Role in the War on Academic Freedom--John K. Wilson * PART II: CHURCHILL V. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO The Myth of Academic Freedom: Experiencing the Application of Liberal Principle in a Neoconservative Era--Ward Churchill * PART III: THE IMAGE AND REALITY OF TEACHING THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT * Civility and Academic Life--Norman G. Finkelstein * The Risk of Knowing--Irene Gendzier * PART IV: NEOLIBERAL FREEDOMS, CONTINGENCY, AND CAPITAL * Caught in the Crunch--Ellen Messer-Davidow * Academic Bondage--Jeffrey J. Williams * Take Your Ritalin and Shut Up--Marc Bousquet * Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Intellectual Engagement--Sophia A. McClennen * PART V: REFLECTIONS AND “TIGHTROPE HOPES” * Generation Kill: Nietzschean Meditations on the University, War, Youth, and Guns--Susan Searls Giroux * The Post-9/11 University: It Could Have Been Much Worse--Robert M. O’Neil * Lessons from History: Interview with Noam Chomsky--Edward J. Carvalho * “Taking Back the Street Corner”: Interview with Martín Espada--Edward J. Carvalho * Preserving the Democratic Experiment: Interview with Cornel West--Edward J. Carvalho