Conference on Academic Freedom at NYU, Apr. 3

The second annual conference on academic freedom hosted by New York University’s Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center will take place on Friday, April 3, at NYU’s Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South (at La Guardia Place), room 905/907. Conference sessions are free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, email zk3@nyu.edu; or phone 212.992.7050. For the conference schedule, visit http://library.nyu.edu/ewen

The conference opens at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, April 3, with a welcome by Stuart Ewen, chairman of the Center’s Board of Directors. A keynote address by Alison Bernstein, vice president, Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom Program, Ford Foundation, follows at 9:45 a.m.

Michael Nash and Marilyn Young talk about the Academic Freedom Center and the Tamiment Library archives at NYU

Additional panels throughout the day focus on: “Academic Capitalism and the Commodification of Knowledge”; “Academic Freedom and the International Perspective”; “Science, Technology, and Academic Freedom”; and “The Red Scare and the Academy.” Closing remarks will be provided by Cary Nelson, professor of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Speakers include: Jennifer Washburn, journalist and author; Robert Quinn, director, Scholars at Risk Network, NYU; Joe Stork, deputy director, Human Rights Watch, Middle East and North Africa Division; and Ewen Fellows Phillip Deery, Victoria University, Melbourne, and Stephen Leberstein, Brooklyn College.

The Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center sponsors scholarly research and public programs to raise awareness of threats to intellectual freedom. It was established in 2007 by Honorary Chair Herbert Kurz and is housed in NYU’s Tamiment Library, an archive devoted to research on labor history and the history of progressive and radical political movements.