BY JOAN W. SCOTT Gender studies is under siege in many places and not just by authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary, and Brazil. Some universities looking to gain control over relatively autonomous programs are replacing feminist stalwarts with their own directors, whom they count on to adhere to corporate strategies of fund-raising and “outreach.” In…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT Our colleagues at Bogacizi University in Istanbul, Turkey, have asked us for support. Below are a letter from Professor Zeynep Gambetti asking for support and a letter that is now circulating to indicate international support. Appeal from Bogazici University Subject: Bogazici University under attack since Jan. 1 Dear friends and colleagues,…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT For many years, in what now seems the distant past, France was known as the nation that welcomed refugees from authoritarian countries; revolutionary activists, artists, exiled politicians, dissident students, could find sustenance and support in the land of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It is also the country whose philosophers gave us…
POSTED BY JOHN K. WILSON We are members of a collective called International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) and are a diverse group of diasporic Indian academics who are deeply concerned about the increasing assaults on academic freedom in India, in particular the attacks on, and incarceration of, anti-caste academics and scholars…
BY DAVID ROBINSON David Robinson is executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). One of Canada’s preeminent universities could be facing a rare censure by the Canadian Association of University Teachers over accusations the administration caved to outside pressure when it cancelled the appointment of an academic administrator. According to a report…
BY ALANA LENTIN AND CO-SIGNATORIES This open letter was originally published on openDemocracy on November 5 and is republished here with permission from the author. A critical response to the Manifesto signed by over 100 French academics and published in the newspaper Le Monde on 2 November 2020, after the assassination of the school teacher, Samuel…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Introducing the Fall 2019 issue of Academe devoted to academic freedom around the world, I wrote that “Scholarship today is global. . . . Threats to scholarship outside the United States inevitably affect scholarship here.” The opposite is also true. Threats by the Trump administration against international scholars in the U.S.…
BY KAVITA DAIYA Just as university administrators, faculty, and students breathed a sigh of relief from the panic created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) July 6 directive barring international students from the United States if their university chose to go online-only in the fall, ICE issued a new…
BY MALAKA SHWAIKH AND REBECCA RUTH GOULD February 2017 was a watershed month for the Palestine advocacy movement in the UK, although we only later came to realize its significance in our own lives. That month, amid a wave of cancellations of events critical of Israel, we were smeared in mainstream and local print and…
BY HARRY R. LEWIS Harry Lewis is Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard College. This essay is reposted from his blog. I used to visit Hong Kong regularly, and also made a few trips to mainland China. One of those trips put me in a provincial…