Academic Freedom in the Wired World

Review: 

"Academic freedom now confronts new challenges with the rise of new technologies (web pages, etc.), national security concerns, the politicization of higher education, both inside and outside of the academy, and the growing penetration of corporate, business, and government interests. This book is the first to describe “clearly, fairly, and astutely” the many different contexts in which problems of academic freedom appear, and the critical tension between institutional and individual freedom. Robert O’Neil writes from a lifetime of experience, as professor, university president, and founder of a free-speech think tank. He was an early and vociferous critic of speech codes and other policies that suppressed the speech of conservative faculty members and students, and he and his book do not flinch in supporting the academic freedom rights of all, including the politically incorrect. A book this broad and clear will be invaluable to anyone attempting to disentangle claims of academic freedom and its complexities."

—Donald A. Downs University of Wisconsin

Description: 

In this passionately argued overview, a longtime activist-scholar takes readers through the changing landscape of academic freedom. From the aftermath of September 11 to the new frontier of blogging, Robert O’Neil examines the tension between institutional and individual interests. Many cases boil down to a hotly contested question: Who has the right to decide what is taught in the classroom?

O’Neil shows how courts increasingly restrict professorial judgment, and how the feeble protection of what is posted on the Internet and written in email makes academics more vulnerable than ever. Even more provocatively, O’Neil argues that the newest threats to academic freedom come not from government, but from the private sector. Corporations increasingly sponsor and control university-based research, while self-appointed watchdogs systematically harass individual teachers on websites and blogs. Most troubling, these threats to academic freedom are nearly immune from legal recourse.

Insisting that new concepts of academic freedom and new strategies for maintaining it are needed, O’Neil urges academics to work together across rigid divisions between "left" and "right," and to be alert to new threats from within the academic world itself.

Target Audience: 

University VCs, Government officials in the ministry of HRD, Educationist and researchers.