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John Tomasi
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy
A new report commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University, Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences, brought together senior scholars to assess the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
In this webinar, recorded on June 11th, HxA President John Tomasi joins report co-author Ashley Rubin (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa) and Regina Rini (York University) to critically discuss the report’s conclusions, where it leaves work undone, and what a genuine path toward healthier scholarly norms might look like.
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Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
