The modern university is sustained by academic freedom; it guarantees
higher education's independence, its quality, and its success in
educating students. The need to uphold those values would seem obvious.
Yet the university is presently under siege from all corners; workers
are being exploited with paltry salaries for full-time work, politics
and profit rather than intellectual freedom govern decision-making, and
professors are being monitored for the topics they teach. No University
Is an Island offers a comprehensive account of the social, political,
and cultural forces undermining academic freedom. At once witty and
devastating, it confronts these threats with exceptional frankness, then
offers a prescription for higher education's renewal. In an insider's
account of how the primary organization for faculty members nationwide
has fought the culture wars, Cary Nelson, the current President of the
American Association of University Professors, unveils struggles over
governance and unionization and the increasing corporatization of higher
education. Peppered throughout with previously unreported, and sometimes
incendiary, higher education anecdotes, Nelson is at his flame-throwing
best. will be the benchmark against which we measure the current
definitive struggle for academic freedom. The book calls on higher
education's advocates of both the Left and the Right to temper
conviction with tolerance and focus on higher education's real
injustices. Nelson demands we stop denying teachers, student workers,
and other employees a living wage and basic rights. He urges unions to
take up the larger cause of justice. And he challenges his own and other
academic organizations to embrace greater democracy. With broad and
crucial implications for the future, No University Is an Island will
be the benchmark against which we measure the current definitive
struggle for academic freedom.
