Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade ReviewKnowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom is brilliant and written with admirable clarity and style. This book could not be more timely or important. -- Michael Bérubé, author of author of
What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher EducationFor decades, Joan Scott has been a passionate and thoughtful advocate for academic freedom. In these penetrating essays, she explores the often subtle tensions between free inquiry and disciplinary authority, critique and orthodoxy, disruption and civility, as well as the distinctions and interplay between academic freedom and freedom of speech, which underpin academic freedom as an ethical practice essential to the academy's future. -- Hank Reichman, chair of the American Association of University Professors Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Joan Scott’s incisive account of the numerous assaults on academic freedom is a timely intervention in the so-called free speech debates. Scott reminds us that the search for truth requires freedom on the part of experts to challenge prior knowledge and established theories. The forces arrayed against academic freedom, she reminds us, would love to do away with public education altogether,which in any functioning democracy is simply unacceptable. -- Carolyn M. Rouse, coauthor of
Televised Redemption: Black Religious Media and Racial EmpowermentFor anyone who cares about the survival of academic freedom in the twenty-first century, this is required reading. Scott deftly outlines the tensions, ambiguities, and paradoxes of academic freedom and proves that it is the oxygen of any healthy democracy. Readers will come away convinced that the crises of our own historical moment call for its reinvention and revitalization. -- Adam Sitze, author of
The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation CommissionAn erudite, concise polemic that explores fundamental ideas of 'academic freedom,' and describes how academic research
has both shaped and been buffeted by the changing regard of broader society for enduring and fact-based knowledge. * Australasian Journal of American Studies *
Scott is inspired by and hopes to remind us of John Dewey’s democratic rationale for academic freedom. Democracy needs its dissenters, its critical thinkers, its gadflies. * Academe *
[A] characteristically sophisticated defense of academic freedom. * Canadian Association of University Teachers *
An astute and critical analysis of the erosion of higher education in the public imagination. * New York Journal of Books *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: On the Future of Academic Freedom
1. Academic Freedom as an Ethical Practice
2. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom
3. Civility, Affect, and Academic Freedom
4. Academic Freedom and the State
5. On Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Epilogue: In the Age of Trump, a Chilling Atmosphere—an Interview with Joan Wallach Scott by Bill Moyers
Notes
Index
