Author Archives: E Wayne Ross

Inside Higher Ed: The Presidential Perspective on Academic Freedom

NEW YORK CITY — Growing external pressures impinging on the university in a globalized, increasingly interconnected world were common concerns during a conference on threats to academic freedom and free inquiry that concluded Friday at the New School. On that note, what more iconic example of the “global university” is there than the American college branch campus built in the Middle East, at the expense of an oil-rich host? (A “mini” New York University is planned in Abu Dhabi, for instance, and there’s an entire “Education City” featuring multiple American universities in Qatar.)

Inside Higher Ed: Academic Freedom Under Many Assaults

“Academic freedom,” that is, the inalienable right of every college instructor to make a fool of himself and his college by vealy, intemperate, sensational prattle about every subject under heaven, to his classes and to the public, and still keep on the payroll or be reft therefrom only by elaborate process, is cried to all the winds by the organized dons.

NEW YORK CITY — In prefacing his remarks with The New York Times’ response to the American Association of University Professors’ first report on academic freedom, Robert M. O’Neil set up his argument that academic freedom has since — but only relatively recently; hence the Times‘ scathing tone less than a century ago — evolved into a “canonical value.”