Threats to Academic Freedom are Global, and So Must Be Its Defense

Abstract

As I sit down to write the introduction to this IJMES roundtable on threats to academic freedom in the Middle East and the multiple consequences of these threats for scholars from and of the region, I also am reading news about proliferating restrictions in the United States. In Florida, professors are changing their courses due to prohibitions on teaching about race issued by the state's governor and legislature, and under threat of losing their jobs and livelihood if they run afoul of these restrictions. In Minnesota an adjunct art history professor was denied future teaching opportunities and called Islamophobic by her employer for exposing her students to the range of Muslim perspectives on creating images of the Prophet Muhammad. At Harvard the former head of Human Rights Watch was initially denied a fellowship, seemingly due to the organization's reporting on Israeli human rights violations. And these instances are just a small sample of the anti–academic freedom news. They serve as a reminder that threats to academic freedom are global.