This article presents a personal history of the author's own relationships with the concept of academic freedom. The article is subdivided into 3 prehistories, 7 incidents, 3 disjunctions, and 3 myths. The author discusses the complications of politics, culture, and academic freedom in one career.

These days, when people want to travel a long way, they take an airplane. But once, not so long ago really, only rich people flew in airplanes. Most people took a train or a bus. Back then, in the Montgomery Greyhound station, one could notice a bricked-up doorway that was once an open door with a sign above it that said "Colored…

This article is the text of a keynote address given to the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation at its annual conference in Chicago in February 2009. Three examples of children's linguistic and literary playfulness are examined, two from England and one from the USA. The article explores the radical implications of these examples for primary…

It seems that fear of Web 2.0 is in full force. There are two concerns that resulted in a national panic concerning Internet Web 2.0 tools: pedophiles luring children via the Internet and corruption of youths through exposure to hard-core pornography or other vile material. Administrators, no doubt, are thinking in terms of saving themselves from…

Founded in 1982, Banned Books Week is celebrated annually during the last week in September and will be observed from September 26-October 3 in 2009. The event acknowledges Americans' right to read the books of their choice regardless of whether the ideas, language, or images are controversial. This annual observance of banned books is a good…

This article reports that not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza at the end of December. How should academics…

This article analyzes the 2002 Coretta Scott King Award book by Mildred Taylor entitled "The Land". The novel and its author are situated within a tradition of historical fiction written by and about African Americans. I then offer an analysis that utilizes Critical Race Theory as an interpretive tool for examining the ways Taylor embeds meanings…

Recent court rulings have challenged the long-held concept of academic freedom for faculty members. As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Kevin J. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him…

Each year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) conducts a rigorous survey of restrictions on speech at America's colleges and universities. The survey and accompanying report explore the extent to which schools are meeting their legal and moral obligations to uphold students' and faculty members' rights to freedom of speech,…

In this paper, the author explored the teachers' experiences and their views regarding how assemblies are conducted in Botswana public schools. The author indicates that assemblies are a common feature in Botswana primary and secondary schools. The author adopted the Christian Privilege as the conceptual framework as espoused by Blumenfeld (2006)…

In the past, administrators have sometimes cited the lack of balance represented by the invitation of a college or university group or the danger that a group's invitation might violate section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code as reasons for canceling or modifying otherwise legitimate invitations. In "Academic Freedom and Outside…

Professors who attended the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) were alarmed about the state of Middle East studies. The group's co-founder, Bernard Lewis, said in his keynote address that the freedom to study and write on the topic of Islam was under assault by a Cerberus of "postmodernism," "political correctness,"…

The two fundamental features of Humboldt's prescription for the new University of Berlin in 1810--research-like learning as a collaboration of teachers and students, and academic freedom of research and teaching (based essentially on an intuitive, but deep understanding of complexity theory)--are as valid now as they were 200 years ago in spite of…

Is academic freedom a philosophical concept tied to larger concepts of individual dignity and autonomy, or is it a guild concept developed in an effort to insulate the enterprise from the threat of a hostile takeover? In this article, the author contends that academic freedom is a professional requirement, not a divine right. It should be advanced…

Most colleges and universities across the British Commonwealth and the United States face crises of confidence in their leadership or their financial systems at some stage in their evolution. This article offers a brief reflection on some governance issues in higher education from the perspective of a Canadian who has served as a dean of law in…