The Future of Academic Freedom [Paperback]

Louis Menand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0226520056 | ISBN-13: 978-0226520056 | Edition: 1

At the bottom of every controversy embroiling the university today—from debates over hate-speech codes to the reorganization of the academy as a multicultural institution—is the concept of academic freedom. But academic freedom is almost never mentioned in these debates. Now nine leading academics, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Edward Said, Richard Rorty, and Joan W. Scott, consider the problems confronting the American University in terms of their effect on the future of academic freedom.

"Louis Menand has assembled The Future of Academic Freedom to better define and delineate what should and should not happen within our colleges and universities. . . . The whole extremely learned yet accessible debate exploits the freedoms it extols, tackling sensitive subjects such as ethnicity and ethics head-on."—Publishers Weekly

"The essays are not only sharp, elegant and lucid, but extremely well-informed about the history of American battles over academic freedom."—Alan Ryan, Times Higher Education Supplement

"[A] superb inquiry into some of the most vexing and significant issues in higher education today."—Zachary Karabell, Boston Book Review

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The issue of academic freedom and its centrality to the debates raging on campuses today is the focus of these essays by a weighty assemblage of academics. Ronald Dworkin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Louis Menand, and Edward W. Said and others grapple with the issues of campus speech codes, the limits of academic freedom, and the ethics of academics. The various authors can be commended for bringing a lot of factual material into the discussion, and for giving substance to their arguments. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

One of the main contenders for New York's "public intellectual" throne, which was left vacant by the likes of Lionel Trilling, City University of New York professor and contributing editor of the New York Review of Books Louis Menand has assembled The Future of Academic Freedom to better define and delineate what should and should not happen within our colleges and universities. Internal debates erupt among the nine essayists: Richard Rorty and Thomas Haskell argue about philosophy; Cass Sunstein and Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. take the debate back to the campus, to what actually gets said inside and outside the classroom. Essays by Edward Said and Menand himself take differing but complementary stands on curriculum. The whole extremely learned yet accessible debate exploits the freedoms it extols, tackling sensitive subjects such as ethnicity and ethics head-on. (Univ. of Chicago, $24.95, 240p ISBN
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226520056
• ISBN-13: 978-0226520056
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,404,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Louis Menand, professor of English at Harvard University, is the author of "The Metaphysical Club," which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in History. A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.