New Volume of JAF and Call for Papers

The AAUP published volume 6 of its online Journal of Academic Freedom in September. Eight of the sixteen essays in the volume, edited by Michael Bérubé, discuss the case of Steven Salaita. Each of those essays considers a different aspect of the controversy that ensued when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rescinded Salaita’s appointment to a tenured faculty position. The other eight articles examine academic freedom issues relating to unionization, Catholic institutions, institutional review boards, Title IX requirements, personal ethics, and a textbook controversy. The Journal of Academic Freedom, which receives funding from the AAUP Foundation, is freely available on the AAUP’s website at http://www.aaup.org/JAF.

The AAUP has appointed Jennifer H. Ruth as the journal’s new editor. Ruth, who will begin her term as editor with the seventh volume of JAF, is an associate professor of English at Portland State University. Her scholarly work covers many areas, including Victorian literature and industrialism, professionalism, and academic labor in the Victorian era and the present. She is the author of Novel Professions: Interested Disinterest and the Making of the Professional in the Victorian Novel and coauthor, with Michael Bérubé, of The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments. Ruth has issued a call for papers for volume 7 of JAF, which will focus on the implications for academic freedom of American universities’ partnerships with, and branch campuses and programs in, authoritarian countries. More general treatments of the “global university” and other essays that contribute to understanding of academic freedom in today’s circumstances are also welcome. For additional details, please review the call for papers on page 7 of this issue.