The New Challenge to Academic Freedom1

Academics have developed principles and policies ofacademic freedom during the last century in order to protect intellectual inquiry from ideological and political interference. One recent academic freedom case is compared to several earlier in the century in order to illustrate how threats to academic freedom have changed in recent decades. Most importantly, threats now come primarily from within rather than outside academe. Even the best academic freedom policies provide scant protection when an institution fails to enforce them and when the professorate fails to insist that they be enforced. Threatened individuals must then tum to external parties for protection. However, such appeals for outside assistance invite the very political interference that academic freedom policies were originally developed to deter. Academics thus risk losing what they collectively fail to protect.     

Governing the Armenian Question through Passports in the Late Ottoman Empire (1876–1908)

The literature on the history of passports has been generally discussed in the context of freedom of movement around the globe during the 19^th century. However, with its administrative regulations and practices, the Ottoman Empire offered a different view of passports and mobility controls. Through perceiving new threats from the political issues of the late 19^th century and directing its attention mainly at the Armenian and Macedonian Questions, one of the critical issues facing the Ottoman government during the Hamidian Era (1876–1908) was controlling the geographic mobility of the individuals who were perceived as a threat based on Ottoman security policies. This paper brings a particular case of this history into focus: the administrative control of the mobility of Armenians. Despite the fact that extensive research has been done on the Armenian Question, so far, little has been written on the policies restricting their mobility. This paper aims to explore the passport regulations and practices to shed light onto the relationship between state formation, Ottoman threat perceptions and the marginalisation of the Armenian community. I offer a new look at the securitisation of the Armenian Question.     

Unauthorized Migrants and the (Il)Logic of “Crime Control”: A Human Rights Perspective on US Federal and Local State Immigration Policies

Immigration control, widely regarded the sovereign right of nation states, has often been pursued at the expense of civil and human rights. More than a century ago, nativists legitimated a punitive approach to immigration control that treated migrants’ rights as secondary by branding millions of newcomers to the United States as a “dangerous class”. In many ways, recent policies similarly criminalize immigrants and deploy crime control strategies in response. This article reviews the most significant of these policies at the federal and local state level, including: border security measures, detention and deportation, the 287(g) program, anti‐immigrant city ordinances, and the Arizona law (SB1070). Each initiative has been framed as necessary to protect American citizens from serious crime. We focus on four ways in which these policies violate human rights: first, border security measures that result in migrant deaths violate the right to life; second, detention and deportation violate the right to liberty; third, detention and deportation punish unlawful residents as though they were guilty of criminal rather than civil violations of the law, imposing penalties that are arbitrary and disproportionately harsh; and fourth, local state policies to counter illegal immigration encourage racial profiling, a practice that violates the right to freedom from discrimination.     

Homosexuals,Heretics, and the Practice of Freedom Commentary on Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pelligrini

Here I construe Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini's proposal to protect freedom of sexual expression among consenting adults within an agonistic theory of democracy. Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue contrary to the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures have intervened in political conflicts over sexual morality by “establishing” sectarian Christian mores, and they urge more robust protection of religious and sexual expression. I develop three themes in response: First, to display the democratic framework of their proposal, I briefly set out the constitutional analogy on which Jakobsen and Pellegrini depend; second, I explain Jakobsen and Pellegrini's rejection of the ethos of tolerance in light of the agonistic political theory of William E. Connolly; and third, I propose that Freud's theory of mourning and melancholia may point to affective resources for invigorating practices of freedom.     

Identity,Campus Climate,and Burnout Among Undergraduate Women in STEM Fields

Women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and these male‐dominated fields are often described as “chilly” and unwelcoming to women. This study examined the potential moderating effect of chilly climate on woman–scientist identity interference and academic burnout among 363 female undergraduate STEM students. Results indicated that identity interference related to greater emotional exhaustion, greater cynicism, and lower academic efficacy. A chillier climate related to more emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Furthermore, a positive relation was found between woman–scientist interference and cynicism when chilly climate was low or moderate. When interference was high, chilly climate did not have a relation with cynicism. When women experienced many threats (i.e., high chilly climate, high interference), they reached a threshold where additional emotional cost did not matter. Results highlight the importance of improving the campus climate for female scientists, as well as the need to assist female scientists in identity development.     

Political Economic Analysis in Sociology as Dramatic Rhetoric*

The relationship between political economy and social problems advanced by S. M. Miller in his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems is analyzed. Political economy is judged to qualify as ritual drama as much as science or as ideology because (1) political economy reduces Maclver's distributive and conjunctural phenomena to collective phenomena, (2) it fails to grapple directly with political and economic obstacles to its proposed policies, and (3) it does invest these obstacles with symbolism. The function of ritual drama is suggested and the concept is applied to the work of other sociologists.     

Rule of law: Sharia panic and the US Constitution in the House of Representatives

In spring of 2011, Peter King (R-NY) convened a hearing titled ‘The Extent of Radicalization among American Muslims’ in the US House of Representatives. Democratic participants critiqued the hearings and contextualized the proceedings within the long history of institutionalized racism in the USA. They argued that the hearings were a threat to the Constitution itself, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Republican participants shared concerns about threats to the Constitution but suggested that the hearings were part of a strategy to combat this threat. Numerous Republican participants identified forms of Islamic law, or sharia law, as the primary threat to the integrity of the rule of law (ROL). Despite opposing positions, all actors agreed that the ‘ROL’ is that which will save the nation from threats posed from both outside and inside the nation and, as such, it is the ROL itself that must be protected. In this sense, the ‘ROL’ ensured by the Constitution inadvertently became the primary object of the hearings. In this essay, we bring analytical approaches from performance studies and anthropology to argue that the hearings impel a re-examination of the concept of ‘ROL’ itself. Rather than simply addressing the legislative effects of the hearings, we are interested in what they reveal about the performative and cultural dimensions of the law and the lawmaking process. While critics of the hearings derisively referred to them as ‘political theater’, we suggest that it is the nature of the King Hearings as staged public spectacle that imbue them with a politically performative power. We also identify the specific effects of sharia panic in contemporary US American political and legal discourse.     

INFORMATIZATION AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

In recent years, both academic and policy making circles in the UK have shown a growing interest in the potential uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the delivery of government services. Much of the academic literature has been centred around the concept of 'informatization', and it has been suggested that the new technologies are transforming public services. Key theorists in the field of Public Administration have argued that informatization is one of a number of major trends likely to shape public services in the twenty-first century. However, the dominant theoretical approaches within public administration- those rooted in political sciencesuggest that inertia and stability are the norm in the public sector; clearly there is something of a contradiction between these two broad approaches. This paper outlines three political science perspectives that might be used in analysing informatization: the policy networks approach, rational choice and the new institutionalism. Evidence is then drawn from the social security, health care and social care sectors of the British public sector and related to the political science frameworks in order to examine their utility. Not only do these frameworks rightly highlight the incremental nature of change, but they also help to explain important variations in ICT use across the three policy sectors. It is concluded that combining the study of informatization and political science offers a fruitful avenue for future research.     

Political choice and the multiple “logics” of capital

Conclusion The issue of whether one sees the constraints on domestic freedom of action as economic or political has important practical consequences. If one accepts the position that reforms such as the expansion of social welfare actually interfere with the fundamental logic of a capitalist order, it becomes very difficult to defend those reforms from conservative attack. One can argue that over the long term the only way to protect those reforms is through a break with the capitalist system, but this does not provide much strategic guidance in the short term. On the contrary, since the left is agreeing that these reforms contribute to the problems of the economy - inflation, slow growth, unemployment - it follows that the citizenry is acting rationally when it supports the right-wing attacks on the reforms. In a context in which the immediate transition to socialism is not possible, it follows that the best way to enhance the collective welfare is by trading off the reforms for the promise of faster economic growth.This is, I would argue, what has happened in the past decade in the United States. While one can easily exaggerate the influence of leftist ideas, the wide dissemination of the accumulation versus legitimation perspective within academia and activist circles has had the effect of persuading key groups of the futility of resisting the Reaganite attacks on the all-too-limited American welfare state. The very notion that Reagan's policies were necessary for American capitalism had the effect of disempowering those who were in a position to resist those policies.If, on the contrary, the left had stressed that the constraints are political and that there are multiple ways to make a capitalist economy work, the possibilities for effective resistance would have been greater. Rather than perceiving Reaganite policies as reflecting some economic necessity, it would have been possible to formulate alternative policies for responding to the economic problems. With such alternative frameworks, it might then be possible to build broader political alliances while also empowering the victims of the cutbacks to fight both to protect earlier gains and to win new concessions.Because the struggle to protect the remnants of the welfare state continues, it is not too late to break the chains of the economistic fallacy. The costs are slight and the benefits could be enormous.     

Quand l'expertise se heurte au pouvoir souverain : la nation américaine face à la prolifération nucléaire, 1945-1953

After the Second World War, the applications of nuclear science raise a crucial threat to international security as far as their civil applications can be turned into military devices. Debates about nuclear proliferation offer a fruitful site to analyze the production of an expertise in bio-security. This paper analyzes in particular how experts have envisioned the role of nation-states and sovereign power in relation to policies aimed at ensuring the security of populations against the risk of nuclear annihilation. It explores what conceptions of sovereignty different experts constructed; what disciplines (political science, natural science, law) were mobilized in this debate; what strategies of institutionalization American experts followed; what publics were targeted by these experts (officials, think tanks, academic publics, media). Experts' conceptions of threats and insurances as well as the institutional paths they build to access policy circles explain which of the experts' policies diffused among policy circles. This approach, which focuses on the production of ideas rather than on the diffusion of administrative norms, complements neo-institutionalist studies of the internationalization of scientific modes of regulation.     

BUILDING ENVIRONMENTALISM: The Founding of Environmental Movement Organizations in the United States, 1900–2000

Between the 19th and the mid‐20th century, the environmental movement transformed American culture, forcing a rethinking of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that had long dominated political thinking toward an understanding of the need to protect and restore the balance between humans and nature. In 1900, there were only a few environmental movement organizations (EMOs), but by 2000, there were over 6,000 national and regional EMOs and over 20,000 local EMOs. What drove this phenomenal growth of EMOs? We examine a 100‐year time series of EMO founding, showing that, in addition to the “legitimation‐and‐competition” effects of organizational density, EMO founding is facilitated by the discourse‐creative activities of critical communities, objective threats in terms of air pollution, foundation giving, and powerful political allies in the presidency and Congress. Environmental discourses also legitimized and competed against one another, favoring “early risers” and preservationist discourse. Environmental mobilization needs to be understood in terms of the creation of new discursive frames that identify environmental problems, as well as objective environmental threats, resources, and political opportunities.     

2014 Presidential Address to the MSSA Membership: Academic Freedom,Free Speech and the MSSA Community of Scholars

This article includes the text from my Presidential Address given at the annual banquet of the Mid-South Sociological Association in November of 2014. In the speech, I highlight the challenges to academic freedom, the importance of a right to free speech, and the responsibility that comes with having both. I further argue that the MSSA, as an association of professionals, draws on the camaraderie it fosters in our organization to support and aid those who fight against the threats to academic freedom.     

Academic freedom,institutional autonomy and the corporatised university in contemporary South Africa 1

This article examines threats from the state, institutional bureaucrats and academics themselves to academic freedom and to the institutional autonomy of universities in South Africa, and argues that the situation is more complex than is often perceived. The generally disappointing post‐independence history of academic freedom and autonomy in Sub‐Saharan Africa is drawn upon to illustrate the perils that may accompany too eager an embrace of the state by intellectuals in South Africa in confronting persisting racial inequities in institutions of higher learning. The article suggests that a ‘republican’ approach linked to social accountability may provide a way forward. To be securely founded, the advancement of academic freedom and institutional autonomy must be embedded in the prevailing power realities: it must grow from the contestation of empowered stakeholders. Finally, the article makes a number of specific recommendations calculated to strengthen the quest for such freedom and autonomy.     

Determinants of the Rigor of State Protection Policies for Persons With Dementia in Assisted Living

Continued growth in the number of individuals with dementia residing in assisted living (AL) facilities raises concerns about their safety and protection. However, unlike federally regulated nursing facilities, AL facilities are state-regulated and there is a high degree of variation among policies designed to protect persons with dementia. Despite the important role these protection policies have in shaping the quality of life of persons with dementia residing in AL facilities, little is known about their formation. In this research, we examined the adoption of AL protection policies pertaining to staffing, the physical environment, and the use of chemical restraints. For each protection policy type, we modeled policy rigor using an innovative point-in-time approach, incorporating variables associated with state contextual, institutional, political, and external factors. We found that the rate of state AL protection policy adoptions remained steady over the study period, with staffing policies becoming less rigorous over time. Variables reflecting institutional policy making, including legislative professionalism and bureaucratic oversight, were associated with the rigor of state AL dementia protection policies. As we continue to evaluate the mechanisms contributing to the rigor of AL protection policies, it seems that organized advocacy efforts might expand their role in educating state policy makers about the importance of protecting persons with dementia residing in AL facilities and moving to advance appropriate policies.     

Violence against nurses in outpatient mental health settings.

Nurses in outpatient mental health settings who have been assaulted may have an increased sense of vulnerability. Assault and verbal threats influence how nurses view client behavior. Mechanisms need to be developed to protect staff in outpatient settings and to support colleagues when assaults or threats occur.     

The manifestations of politics in evaluation: An exploratory study across the evaluation process

Evaluation has been described as a political act. Programs and policies are generated from a political process, and the decision to evaluate and how to use the evaluation are manifestations of the political dynamic. This exploratory study was conducted with practicing evaluators to understand what they view as political situations in the evaluation process and how they responded to these situations. Findings suggest that, in relation to the potential evaluation phases in which each respondent has been involved, evaluations are susceptible to politics when initially attempting to identify stakeholders and when it’s time to report the evaluation findings. Evaluators have also developed multiple strategies for dealing with these situations, including finding allies for the evaluation and working to explain the evaluation process and its implications. We hope that this study will help to inform novice and expert evaluators about the various political situations they may encounter in their practice.     

The Form of Children’s Political Engagement in Everyday Life

This article explores the form of children’s political engagement, considering the politicization of events, their political understanding and alignments. It draws on research into memories of childhood and social change in the latter half of the 20th century and builds on academic debates about children’s political participation. Children’s experience of policing, industrial unrest, popular dissent, social movements and party politics is discussed. Children’s political engagement involves three elements. They must navigate different political perspectives, their understanding grows through feelings of concern and empathy, and they align to groups they can relate to and feel might make a difference.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Power Elite</Emphasis> in historical context: a reevaluation of Mills’s thesis,then and now

This article presents a reevaluation of C. Wright Mills’s classic book, The Power Elite, in light of recent historical evidence about the changing nature of the corporate elite in the United States. I argue that Mills’s critique of the mid-twentieth century American elite, although trenchant and in large part appropriate, fails to acknowledge the extent to which business leaders of that era adopted a moderate and pragmatic approach to politics. Operating with an orientation they termed “enlightened self-interest,” the elites of that era promoted policies that—at least to an extent—served the interests of the larger population. I show how the history of the American corporate elite as well as the character of the current US big business community allows us to gain a clearer perspective on the actions of the group’s mid-century counterparts.     

Commons and the nature of modernity: towards a cosmopolitical view on craft guilds

Theory and Society - This paper argues that historical research on late medieval and early modern craft guilds fails to escape teleological and anachronistic views, including when they are...     

Public‐Service Provision in Clientelist Political Settlements: Lessons from Ghana's Urban Water Sector

The politics of public‐service delivery continues to be neglected under the supposedly more context‐sensitive post‐Washington Consensus. Using interviews and documentary evidence from Ghana, this article provides an account of the networks of political interference and informal practices in Ghana's public water utility. It argues that, in order to understand why private‐sector participation succeeds or fails and why similar arrangements have different outcomes across developing countries, we need to examine the effects of the informal institutional context, particularly the country‐specific political settlement in which public‐service provision operates.