No university is an island : saving academic freedom / Cary Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, Cary.

Series:

Cultural front (Series)

Cultural Front ; 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American Association of University Professors. Committee on Academic Freedom.

American Association of University Professors.

Education, Higher--Philosophy.

Education, Higher.

Education, Higher--Political aspects.

Universities and colleges--Political aspects.

Universities and colleges.

Academic freedom.

Teaching, Freedom of.

Intellectual freedom.

Political correctness.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (300 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The modern university is sustained by academic freedom; it guarantees higher education’s independence, its quality, and its success in educating students. The need to uphold those values would seem obvious. Yet the university is presently under siege from all corners; workers are being exploited with paltry salaries for full-time work, politics and profit rather than intellectual freedom govern decision-making, and professors are being monitored for the topics they teach.No University Is an Island offers a comprehensive account of the social, political, and cultural forces undermining academic freedom. At once witty and devastating, it confronts these threats with exceptional frankness, then offers a prescription for higher education’s renewal. In an insider’s account of how the primary organization for faculty members nationwide has fought the culture wars, Cary Nelson, the current President of the American Association of University Professors, unveils struggles over governance and unionization and the increasing corporatization of higher education. Peppered throughout with previously unreported, and sometimes incendiary, higher education anecdotes, Nelson is at his flame-throwing best.The book calls on higher education’s advocates of both the Left and the Right to temper conviction with tolerance and focus on higher education’s real injustices. Nelson demands we stop denying teachers, student workers, and other employees a living wage and basic rights. He urges unions to take up the larger cause of justice. And he challenges his own and other academic organizations to embrace greater democracy.With broad and crucial implications for the future, No University Is an Island will be the benchmark against which we measure the current definitive struggle for academic freedom.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What Is Academic Freedom?

1 The Three-Legged Stool: Academic Freedom, Shared Governance, and Tenure

2 How a Campus Loses Its Way: Sixteen Threats to Academic Freedom

3 Legacies of Misrule: Our Contingent Future

4 Barefoot in New Zealand: Political Correctness on Campus

5 The Future of Faculty Unionization

6 Graduate-Employee Unionization and the Future of Academic Labor

7 On Weakened Ground: The AAUP, Pedagogy, and the Struggle over Academic Freedom

8 No Campus Is an Island: Reflections on the AAUP Presidency

9 Evolution or Devolution: The Future of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780814759059

081475905X

9780814758601

0814758606

OCLC:

779828463