Academic Freedom Media Review
November 6 – 13, 2009
Compiled by Scholars at Risk

Student Activist Held in Tunisia at Risk of Torture
NEAR, 11/13

Norwegian University’s Board Rejects Academic Boycott of Israel
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/13

Courage on campus
The Baltimore Sun, 11/13

Convicted Terrorist Won’t Speak at UMass-Amherst After All
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/12

Threat to Faculty Free Speech
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 11/10

Iran Condemns Oxford Memorial Scholarship for Woman
Ladane Nasseri and Ali Sheikholeslami, Bloomberg, 11/10

EUROPE: Scoring university autonomy
Ard Jongsma, University World News, 11/8

News Analysis: Converting Adjuncts to the Tenure Track Is More Easily Discussed Than Done
Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/8

A November 6, 2009 Press Release from Scholars at Risk:

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is gravely concerned about reports indicating that Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, a respected international scholar and researcher, has been arrested, convicted and sentenced to over 12 years in prison. Reports indicating that an appeal may not be heard are of equal concern. SAR asks for letters, faxes and emails respectfully urging authorities to reconsider his case and ensure that an appeal be heard.

More information on the case and how to respond is available here.

Academic Freedom Media Review
October 30 – November 6, 2009
Compiled by Scholars at Risk

Government backs down on science freedom demands
Mark Henderson, The Times, 11/6

Scholars at Risk Calls for Letters on Behalf of Iranian Scholar Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh
SAR, 11/6

Fiji throws out Australian academic
AFP, 11/5

Israel Boycott Fight Moves to Norway
Inside Higher Ed, 11/3

continue reading "Call for Letters on Behalf of Iranian Scholar and Academic Freedom Media Review"

Compiled by Scholars at Risk

Israel Deports a Bethlehem U. Student Because She Is From Gaza
Matthew Kalman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/29

The United States Provides $45 Million for Higher Education Commission
U.S. Department of State, 10/29

Academia and its Discontents
Jia Ahmad, Nneka McGuire and Nicholas Wong, Columbia Spectator, 10/29

continue reading "Academic Freedom Media Review, October 23-30"

Here, once again, is the weekly Academic Freedom Media Review from one of those organizations I wish would just go away.  Go away because there would simply be no more need for it.  Unfortunately, all over the world scholars come under attack for their scholarship or teaching.  It’s said that knowledge is power and history is full of examples of the power of ideas to rock the foundations of societies of political structures.

And so scholars, researchers, students, and even administrators find sometimes find themselves subject to restrictions on their academic freedom  that include obstruction of their research, prohibition of its publication, bans against being able to teach, requirements for ideological review of publications and course materials, unofficial intimidation from any number of sources, blacklisting, media smear campaigns and the like.  All to often scholars might even be subject to arrest, extended imprisonment, torture or even assassination.

The Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) is an international network of universities and colleges that responds to this by raising awareness of the issue, getting scholars in particular danger out of danger, and through other programs described on their site.

Academic Freedom Media Review
October 9 – 23, 2009
Compiled by Scholars at Risk

Hundreds of Palestinian Students Are Blocked From Travel to Foreign Universities
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/22

Colleges and Universities Across Pakistan Are Closed Following Deadly Attacks
Shailaja Neelakantan,The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/21
continue reading "Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Media Review"

The Academic Freedom Media Review is a collection of articles compiled weekly by Scholars at Risk. This is the review for October 2-9, 2009.

Iranian Professors Worldwide Call for Independent Ethical Conducts of their Peers in Iran
Payvand Iran News, 10/9

Palestinian University Is Shut Down Amid Fight For Control
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/8

Law to back academic freedom
Guy Healy, The Australian, 10/7

Egypt’s top cleric plans face veil ban in schools
Sarah El Deeb, Associated Press, 10/6

File under – ‘Silly comments by middle-aged university managers’
Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, Irish Times, 10/6

UNL faculty report aims to protect academic freedom
Melissa Lee, Lincoln Journal Star, 10/6

US complains about Turkmen student travel ban
Peter Leonard, Associated Press, 10/5

Saudi cleric sacked after attacking mixing at new university
AFP, 10/5

Palestinian Students in Gaza Ask Egypt to Allow Entrance to Universities
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/5

KENYA: University closed indefinitely after violent protest
Dave Buchere, University World News, 10/4

Visa snarl-up leaves thousands of Pakistani students barred from UK
Declan Walsh, The Guardian, 10/4

IRAN: Students protest on first day of new term
Jonathan Travis and Daniel Sawney, University World News, 10/4

Overthrown Honduras Culture Minister, Now at Harvard, Watches Strife From Afar
Noah S. Rayman and Elyssa A. L. Spitzer, Harvard Crimson, 10/2

The Academic Freedom Media Review is a collection of articles compiled weekly by Scholars at Risk. This is the review for September 25 – October 2, 2009.

UWO joins effort to protect scholars
Chip Martin, London Free Press, 10/1

Peruvian Academic Receives Death Threats
NEAR, 10/1

Israeli Court Says University Bowed to Chinese Pressure in Closing Exhibit
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1

Saudi cleric to king’s university: don’t teach evolution, mix sexes
Asma Alsharif, Reuters FaithWorld Blog, 10/1

Calvin College Faculty Asks Trustees to Withdraw Memo Against Gay Advocacy
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1

Government threatened grant agency over Mideast conference
Anne McIlroy, Globe and Mail, 9/30

New Saudi University Draws Criticism from High-Level Cleric
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30

St. Louis U. Blocks David Horowitz Event
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education, 9/29

LEBANON: Scholar angry at NATO after invitation to speak
Meris Lutz, The Los Angeles Times, 9/29

Tehran students protest on campus
BBC, 9/28

Venezuelan students keep up hunger strike
Reuters, 9/28

Universities in Philippines Close to Assist in Relief Efforts After Storm-Driven Floods
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/27

The Academic Freedom Media Review is compiled weekly by the Scholars at Risk Network . The review for September 18 – 25, 2009 is re-posted here, albeit somewhat late.

Speaker takes note of protesters
Eric Weddle, Lafayette Journal and Courier, 9/25

Spain expels Israeli scientists from solar energy competition
Giles Tremlett, The Guardian, 9/24

First Dual-Degree Program for American and Palestinian Universities Opens
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/24

California: System Will Grant Degrees to Those Sent to Internment Camps
The New York Times, 9/24

Nobel laureate urges challenge to Ahmadinejad
Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 9/23

Kentucky Attorney General Tells Community-College Board to Restore Tenure
Peter Schmidt, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/23

Students in Iran face purge over protest fears
Robert Tait, The Guardian, 9/22

Beijing Students Pressed to Stop Protesting Lecturer’s Detention
Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times, 9/21

Islamic Scholars Plan for America’s First Muslim College
Kathryn Masterson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/21

Columbia U. Provost Agrees to Meet with Critics of Palestinian Scholar’s Tenuring
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/21

GLOBAL: Academic Freedom: A realistic appraisal
Philip G. Altbach, University World News, 9/20

US: Professor fired over sexual harassment
University World News, 9/20

Academics concerned about the assault on Iranian Universities
Payvand Iran News, 9/18

Jennifer Howard writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education today,

Criticism continues to rain down on Yale University and Yale University Press for their decision to remove all images of the Prophet Muhammad from a forthcoming scholarly book, The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Jytte Klausen.

Now the National Coalition Against Censorship and a group of academic and free-speech organizations have sent a letter of protest to Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin, and the Yale Corporation. “This misguided action established a dangerous precedent that threatens academic and intellectual freedom around the world,” the coalition wrote. It said that the university’s action “compromises the principle and practice of academic freedom, undermines the independence of the press, damages the university’s credibility, and diminishes its reputation for scholarship.”

via Academic and Free-Speech Groups Join Criticism of Yale U. Press Over Cartoons in Book – Publishing – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Yale had withdrawn the cartoons from the book for fear of offending Muslims and inciting violence.

Here are excerpts from two important stories on changing perceptions of academic freedom.

As Inside Higher Ed reported last month, a Ben-Gurion University political science professor, Neve Gordon published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in Counterpunch and in the Guardian that endorsed a gradually expanding international boycott of Israel. In her response, also published in the LA Times, Ben-Gurion University’s president, Rivka Carmi ventured not only to castigate Gordon but also to redefine academic freedom in ways contrary to traditions of the American Association of University Professors.

With these very troubling ideas circulating in the United States, a clear need for the AAUP to address the story has arisen. That need is underlined by the fact that several American scholars writing about the Middle East have either lost their jobs or had their tenure cases challenged because of their scholarly or extramural publications. Statements by Carmi and other Israeli administrators thus have the potential to help undermine academic freedom not only in Israel but elsewhere. These are in every sense worldwide debates.

Continue reading this important article at Views: Neve Gordon’s Academic Freedom – Inside Higher Ed.

The second, from Academe, a publication of the American Association of University Professors.  In it Robert O’Neil, professor emeritus of law at the University of Virginia and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, surveys developments in the way we look at issues relating to academic freedom when it relates to online publication in all is forms and calls for a new policy on the matter.  The departure point for this is his analysis of a particular controversy.

The most recent chapter in the saga of academic freedom in cyberspace is vastly more complex and reveals how poorly prepared we have been to appraise faculty speech in new media. William Robinson, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2009 to send a most unusual e-mail to all eighty students in his Sociology of Globalization class. Robinson had become increasingly disturbed about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. The electronic message contained an accusation that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, arguably analogous to Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust. Robinson claimed that “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw,” adding his belief that the Jewish nation had been “founded on the negation of [the Palestinian people].” Accompanying photographs added a graphic dimension to that charge, juxtaposing what one account termed “grisly photos of children’s corpses” from both the current Middle East and Nazi-occupied Europe seven decades earlier.

Several of Robinson’s students promptly brought the e-mail to the attention of the regional Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which wrote at once to express its deep concern to the professor himself, with copies to UCSB’s chancellor and the University of California system president. At a meeting several weeks later between national ADL leaders and UCSB officials, the ADL demanded a formal inquiry into what the organization perceived as blatant anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, a campus faculty senate committee began an investigation of its own, and Santa Barbara’s full senate called for the creation of three separate committees to probe the burgeoning controversy. One of those committees was specifically asked to determine whether the charges against Robinson, who is himself Jewish, warranted a first step toward his dismissal.

Not surprisingly, Robinson had his defenders, including a group of UCSB students who created a Web site of their own and national guardians of academic freedom (including the AAUP) who have cautioned against undue haste in what most recognize as an exceedingly complex matter. Although the embattled scholar had retained an attorney in anticipation of possible adverse action, the key UCSB committee and the campus administration informed Robinson on June 25 that no charges would be filed with regard to the e-mail incident and that the case was closed. Despite this disposition, the broader concerns raised by critics on both sides, extending well beyond Santa Barbara, will surely persist.

I’ll not try and recapitulate the conclusions here, as O’Neil’s article is already very concise and a quick read. If the issues interests you, I’d suggest reading it.  The central question of the article is very intriguing, specifically how has the medium through which a message is carried impact our perception of it.

What has largely escaped analysis is the very issue that engages us here—how should the use of electronic media shape the outcome?

You’ll find a lot to think about in these two short postings!

The Academic Freedom Media Review is compiled on a weekly basis by Scholars at Risk.  This is the review for  September 4 – 11, 2009

An Activist Adjunct Shoulders the Weight of a New Advocacy Group
Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/10

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh is freed and goes abroad
Reporters Without Borders, 9/7

GLOBAL: Researchers in dangerous times
Brendan O’Malley, University World News, 9/6

TURKMENISTAN: Reverse student travel ban
University World News, 9/6

Iran’s Universities Punish Students Who Disputed Vote
Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, 9/5

U.S. scholarships get Cuban college students expelled
Wilfredo Cancio Isla, Miami Herald, 9/4

On academic freedom
Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 9/3

The Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) is an international network of universities and colleges responding to attacks on sholars because of their words, their ideas and their place in society.  SAR promotes academic freedom and defends the human rights of scholars and their communities worldwide.