Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom (eBook)

Joan Wallach Scott (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2019
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-54893-9 (ISBN)

Infos

This book presents a series of essays by the renowned historian Joan Wallach Scott that explore the history and theory of academic freedom and the value of critical inquiry today. Scott gives a nuanced reflection on the tensions within one of academia's cherished concepts.

ScottJoan Wallach:

Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her books include Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996); The Fantasy of Feminist History (2011); Sex and Secularism (2017), and Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, anniversary edition, 2017).Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Her books include Sex and Secularism (2017) and Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, thirtieth anniversary edition, 2018). She is a long-standing member of the American Association of University Professors Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

---

Academic freedom rests on a shared belief that the production of knowledge advances the common good. In an era of education budget cuts, wealthy donors intervening in university decisions, and right-wing groups threatening dissenters, scholars cannot expect that those in power will value their work. Can academic freedom survive in this environment-and must we rearticulate what academic freedom is in order to defend it?This book presents a series of essays by the renowned historian Joan Wallach Scott that explore the history and theory of free inquiry and its value today. Scott considers the contradictions in the concept of academic freedom. She examines the relationship between state power and higher education; the differences between the First Amendment right of free speech and the guarantee of academic freedom; and, in response to recent campus controversies, the politics of civility. The book concludes with an interview conducted by Bill Moyers in which Scott discusses the personal experiences that have informed her views. Academic freedom is an aspiration, Scott holds: its implementation always falls short of its promise, but it is essential as an ideal of ethical practice. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom is both a nuanced reflection on the tensions within a cherished concept and a strong defense of the importance of critical scholarship to safeguard democracy against the anti-intellectualism of figures from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump.

Inhalt

CONTENTS 5
Introduction: On the Future of Academic Freedom 9
1. Academic Freedom as an Ethical Practice 23
2. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom 47
3. Civility, Affect, and Academic Freedom 77
4. Academic Freedom and the State 103
5. On Free Speech and Academic Freedom 119
Epilogue: In the Age of Trump, a Chilling Atmosphere - An Interview with Joan Wallach Scott 133
NOTES 153
INDEX 171

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.1.2019
• Reihe/Serie: The Wellek Library Lectures
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Schulbuch / Allgemeinbildende Schulen
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• ISBN-10: 0-231-54893-1 / 0231548931
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-54893-9 / 9780231548939