This paper observes that Americans, although they broadly and vocally resist informational censorship in the schools even for children, waffle in their efforts to eliminate the powerful and sometimes offensive cultural artifacts of popular "teen culture" from school curriculums. Potent economic and political forces, however, conspire to…

The commodification of research in the social sciences sees a focus on "inputs" rather than "outputs" and an emphasis on the "science" rather than the "social". The empirical prevails at the expense of the critical, with lessening interest in, and support for, knowledge designed to interrogate orthodoxy.…

This article offers a glimpse into one of the many ways in which the Egyptian government and the campus administrators it appoints are slowly and persistently squeezing the life out of universities in Cairo, Egypt. Classroom discussions are monitored, faculty appointments and academic research are scrutinized, and faculty participation in outside…

This article traces part of the history of neoconservatism in the United States and analyses its impact on contemporary schooling. It examines the political evolution of a fraction of old leftists whose disenchantment with the possibilities of radical transformation led them to become new rightists. Whether attacking the countercultural left or…

The 2008 presidential campaign has, by all accounts, been extraordinary. Record numbers of voters expressed their views in historic primaries, and citizens across the country have been invigorated by debate about what policies and which politician will be best for this country. Equally noteworthy is the fact that young people have not been absent…

The ongoing crisis of the German university illustrates the potential difficulties with implementing the emerging global model (EGM) of the new research university in a nation where there is a long tradition of higher education, and where the university and the nation-state have developed together through a historical symbiotic relationship. To…

An experimental questionnaire study, conducted in the Netherlands, examined adolescents' reasoning about freedom of speech and minority rights. Muslim minority and non-Muslim majority adolescents (12-18 years) made judgments of different types of behaviors and different contexts. The group membership of participants had a clear effect. Muslim…

Libraries throughout the world are increasingly involved in the production of scholarly publications. Much of this has been thanks to the growth of open access (OA) publishing in all its forms, from peer-reviewed "gold" journals to "green" self-archiving, and electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) repositories. As a result, more and more of the…

In the opening sentence of his May 1949 article in this journal, Ward W. Keesecker was on the mark in writing, "What the Supreme Court of the United States has said pertaining to State school administration and how their decisions affect the rights and privileges of individuals are matters of wide interest and concern to school business officials…

This article profiles Rebecca Knuth, winner of the LJ Teaching Award for 2009. The way she plans a class she's teaching illustrates why she was nominated by her students and won the award. The award, which comes with a $5000 honorarium and a celebration at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting, is sponsored by ProQuest. For…

The latest initiative to address mental health needs of the nation, including those of children and youth, is the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC). The NFC formulated a benchmark of six goals and related recommendations toward which the U.S. should strive, including the recommendation that each state develop a…

In his concurring opinion to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, "Morse v. Frederick," Justice Clarence Thomas argues that the "Tinker" decision, which granted students constitutional rights in public schools, should be overturned on originalist grounds. In this essay, Bryan Warnick, Bradley Rowe, and Sang Hyun Kim make the case that Thomas's…

In this essay, a tribute to Jacques Derrida's educational efforts at expanding access to current work in philosophy, John Willinsky examines his efforts as both a public right and an element of academic freedom that bear on the open access movement today. Willinsky covers Derrida's extension and outreach work with the Groupe de Recherches pour…

After presenting a history of censorship, the paper examines current censorship arising from people who are frightened of ideas counter to their own. The impact of music and book censorship is discussed, and the realities of political correctness are noted. (SM)

This paper examines the origins of the principle of free expression as worked out by Galileo. It is intended to supplement standard histories of the development of free expression and to recover its history as part of the political project of postmodernism. The paper resurrects Galileo's encounters with entrenched beliefs in order to position free…