American Association of University Professors, Journal of Academic Freedom--CALL FOR PAPERS

The American Association of University Professors' Journal of Academic Freedom--a peer-reviewed, online, open access publication--seeks scholarly articles relating to three clusters of topics:

Electronic communications and academic freedom

• How has the growth of electronic communications facilitated and impinged on academic freedom?
• What are the implications for academic freedom of the proliferation of open access publications?
• Are commercial entities contributing to the commodification of knowledge through various electronic gatekeeping mechanisms?
• How can institutions cope with hacking and other forms of electronic piracy while maintaining accessibility?
• To what extent are social media such as Twitter and Facebook changing forms of scholarly communication and knowledge dissemination, and what is the upshot for issues of academic freedom?
• How are the increasingly elastic and intangible walls of the electronic classroom challenging existing definitions of academic freedom, shared governance, and intellectual property?
• In what ways can we promote faculty participation in the shared governance of various forms of electronic communications?
• Are faculty e-mails considered the property of the institution? Can administrators read faculty e-mails without notice or permission?

The abridgement of academic freedom in instruction

• The case of former Indiana governor Mitchell Daniels' efforts to purge scholars' writings from the classroom has drawn attention to renewed attacks on academic freedom in instruction. Where are such attacks coming from and how have they been resolved?
• The Gates Foundation has devoted millions of dollars to supporting MOOCs and other experiments in online teaching. To what extent are such experiments curtailing or facilitating faculty input into course design?
• The suspension of University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan in 2012 drew attention to the increasingly tense relationship between university boards of trustees and university faculty and executives. In what ways, if any, are such institutional dynamics transforming academic freedom in instruction?
• Federal and state assessment protocols are putting pressure on curricula in many fields. We are interested in both case studies and overviews that detail the impact of these pressures on academic freedom.

The increased use of suspensions

• In September 2013, a professor at the University of Kansas tweeted a comment about gun control that led to a barrage of hate messages. The university suspended this faculty member in order to "avoid disruption." To what extent are such misused suspensions proliferating, and how might faculty members be made more aware of their rights?
• As university work has become more complex and extensive, the number of duties from which professors can be suspended has proliferated. Examples include relationships of researchers to outside funding agencies, access to email and computing services, and workplace provisions against sexual misconduct, just to name a few of the complex domains in which professors often operate today. What kinds of problems of academic freedom do partial suspensions in these and other areas represent?
• University administrators often seek to cloak suspension in duplicitous language. Does reassignment to duties other than teaching constitute a form of suspension, for example? What is the distinction between such a sanctioning of faculty rights and total suspension?

The due date for papers on the topic of academia and globalization isJanuary 31, 2014.

In addition to accepting scholarly papers relating to these topics, theJournal of Academic Freedom continues to welcome submissions on eclectic subjects.

Electronic submissions should go to jaf@aaup.org and must include an abstract of about 150 words. The journal uses the sixteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and authors should anticipate that, if an article is accepted for publication, it will need to be put into Chicago style.

The mission of the AAUP is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good. By joining, faculty members, academic professionals, and graduate students help to shape the future of the profession and proclaim their dedication to the education community. Visit theAAUP website and Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.