Thursday, August 21, 2008

Proposals for AAUP Conference on "Globalization, Shared Governance, and Academic Freedom"

At the urging of myself, Cary Nelson, and many others, the AAUP is going to expand and open up its annual meeting to proposals for individual papers and sessions. Globalization, Shared Governance, and Academic Freedom: An International Conference, will be held June 12-13, 2009 in conjunction with the AAUP's Annual Meeting at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, DC. Deadline for proposals is October 31, 2008.

According to the conference announcement,
Among the questions the conference intends to explore are:

* What is the state of academic freedom around the world and what challenges does it currently face in the United States?
* Can scholarship survive in an era of secrecy and censorship?
* Who is making decisions in the corporate university? What ever happened to shared governance?
* What are the implications of the excessive use of contingent faculty and how do we address the issue?
* How are public policy decisions at the national and state levels affecting higher education?
* What are the personal, professional and institutional responsibilities of faculty and how can conflicting responsibilities be resolved?
* How can faculty communicate the intricacies and subtleties of their disciplines to a broad, non-specialist audience?

Conference strands are not limited to the above topics. Presenters are invited to propose a wide range of issues related to academic freedom, governance, faculty work life, rights and responsibilities. The goal of the conference is to provide a faculty perspective on critical issues in higher education presented in a format accessible to the general public.

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