Thread by @JeffreyASachs

This, from @AcademicRenewal, is so clearly a threat to academic freedom that you need to engage in some seriously willful blindness to think it's okay. Further proof, in case it was needed, that The Martin Center does not take academic freedom seriously.

jamesgmartin.center/2019/09/no-aca…

@AcademicRenewal This is like when folks on the Left complain about courses on "European history" or "Western thought" on the premise that they're code words for white supremacy. Grow up.

@AcademicRenewal This of course is the heart of their objection. Duke-UNC's course content needs to simultaneously be studiously apolitical (which by the way is an obvious violation of academic freedom and a misread of Title VI to boot) and also fiercely patriotic. Square that circle!

@AcademicRenewal What's that? You've never heard of the controversy over Michael Sells (the nicest man in Islamic Studies) or his book, Approaching the Qur'an (the most accessible introduction in English to the early suras)?

latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

@AcademicRenewal Now, this is the big issue here, and it's one that people can reasonably disagree over. But for myself, I think the argument for why funding agencies ought to exercise maximal (though not infinite) deference to universities in areas of research and pedagogy is overwhelming.

@AcademicRenewal In short, @AcademicRenewal's problem with Duke-UNC's consortium isn't that it's political. It's that it's political in the wrong way. And if that doesn't seem to you like a threat to academic freedom, then you either don't understand the term or don't hold it in high regard.