Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Indian Sociologist Accused of Murder in Case She Says is Retaliation for Her Work
UPDATE: Two Indian social scientists are among 10 people charged with murder in an Indian state wracked by an ongoing insurgency by Maoist rebels that the academics were actively studying. Almost 200 Indian sociologists are protesting the arrest.
Black History and the Myth of Mary Seacole
In what he describes as the obverse of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, Robert Dingwall argues that the secular sainthood conferred on Mary Seacole steps on historical scholarship and ignores more genuine exemplars.
What’s ‘World Class’ About University Rankings?
Higher education is a globally competitive market and institutions with a high rank can claim exceptionalism that brings in students and funding, acknowledges our Michelle Stack. But are rankings genuinely useful for students or for research?
In Australia, Academic Contracts Threaten Freed Speech
Academics need to retain their freedom to speak on matters of interest, which intersect with their specialized knowledge, even where that intersection is tangential or not visible to others.
The Never-Ending Audit®: Questioning the Lecturer Experience
The never-ending audit makes a crucial point about the ways in which power structures have shifted within universities, argues our Daniel Nehring. In effect, it suggests the death of the ideal of the autonomous scholar-researcher-teacher.
Archived Webinar: Librarians and the Freedom to Read
Last month the webinar “Battling Bannings- Authors discuss intellectual freedom and the freedom to read” saw Index on Censorship’s Vicky Baker moderate a discussion between historian Wendy Doniger and children’s book authors Christine Baldacchino and Jessica Herthel.
Thoughts on Academic Freedom (and Our Series)
Below are some of the comments and articles that have addressed the issues of academic freedom as written about in the series appearing at Social Science Space.
The Soviet System, Neoliberalism and British Universities
Craig Brandist compares aspects of British higher education to the old Soviet Union, with a similar tendency towards stagnation and strategies that workers adopt to absorb managerial pressure.
