JAF

Journal of Academic Freedom

The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. Scholarship on academic freedom is typically scattered across a wide range of disciplines; the Journal provides a central place to track the developing international discussion about academic freedom and its collateral issues.

AAUP Welcomes New Editor of Journal of Academic Freedom

The AAUP has announced the appointment of Ashley Dawson as the new editor of the online AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom. Dawson, who will begin his term as editor with the 2013 volume of JAF, is a professor of English at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His scholarly work covers many areas, including imperialism, ecocriticism, globalization, postcolonial studies, and academic freedom. Dawson is the author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain and a coeditor of three other books.

New Volume of Journal of Academic Freedom

Volume 4 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom is now available at http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/journal-academic-freedom/volume-4. The Journal, published annually, features scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining.

Editor's Introduction - Volume 4

The call for papers for this issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom was focused on the globalization of higher education and its impact on academic freedom. How, the CFP asked, is the expansion of US higher education around the world and the increasing international integration of academia affecting academic freedom? In what ways, conversely, is the globalization of higher education transforming academia within the United States, shifting and impinging upon traditional notions of academic freedom?

A Response to the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, Volume 4

As an American-Israeli academic I feel obliged to add a few words to the current discussion in AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom on boycotting Israeli academics and academic institutions. Like many of my colleagues here, I do not dispute that there is inequality in the state of Israel. Like many of us (not only in academe) I believe in the right of Palestinians to a state of their own. What divides many of us politically in Israel is not whether we want a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but how that is to be achieved without endangering Israel.

Say It Ain’t So, Joan: A Response to the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, Volume 4

This response to a Journal of Academic Freedom article by Joan Scott discusses academic boycotts of Israel in the context of Chinese suppression of academic freedom.

Binding Academic Freedom with Ideological Bonds: A Response to the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, Volume 4

Academic freedom should not be bound by any ideological litmus test, nor should academic freedom be abridged because of prejudice, bigotry, and one-sided narrow vision. Yet, that is exactly what a round table of articles in the latest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom does. With the exception of one article all of the articles, focused on boycotting Israel, are written by proponents of boycotting Israeli academics and institutions of higher learning.

Response to Cary Nelson and Ernst Benjamin

The responses by Cary Nelson and Ernst Benjamin to the Journal of Academic Freedom’s recent forum on academic boycott offer little new to the familiar litany of objections to the academic and cultural boycott of Israel [ACBI]. Moreover, neither response shows any signs of having seriously read and considered what the essays in the forum actually propose. When they do even refer to them, their misreadings are so egregious that one would almost prefer to presume malice than to impute obtuseness to a colleague. Most extraordinary is that they proceed as if the matter at stake were Israeli academic freedom, the protection of Israeli rights to debate and criticize, the defense of a largely illusory body of Israeli academics that are supposedly engaged in a vigorous critique of the occupation of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens of Israel along with Bedouins in the South Hebron Hills and the Negev, the ethnically exclusive nature of the State of Israel, etc, etc, etc. It would be wonderful if this flourishing sphere of liberal to left critical thought really existed, but it would still not be the issue on hand.

Response to Cary Nelson: A Response to the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, Volume 4

Cary Nelson’s response to essays published in the Journal of Academic Freedom which support the boycott of Israeli universities reproduces the settler-colonial logic contributors to the issue identify as reasons for supporting the boycott in the first place. For example, in response to my argument that “the casual fetishization of academic freedom” is part of a “liberal hegemony that provides ideological cover for brutal acts of intellectual and political terror by Israel,” Nelson writes, “But no one argues that academic freedom covers military action or justifies political terror.”

Editor's Introduction - Volume 1

With this issue we introduce a new online project—The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom. Scholarship on academic freedom—and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining--is typically scattered across a wide range of disciplines. People who want to keep up with the field thus face a difficult task. Moreover, there is no one place to track the developing international discussion about academic freedom and its collateral issues.

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