[Peace-discuss] Academic Freedom Conference announcement restatement.

Mon Mar 24 15:55:50 UTC 2014

Academic Freedom Conference, 
"Are there Limits to Inquiry?"
Illini Union Room 314A, April 26th 

According to the UofI website 'About Us' page, one of the functions of the university is "addressing critical societal needs through the transfer and application of knowledge." This is an indisputable point we all agree upon. No subject that meets the criterion of a critical societal need should be off limits. We all agree that political, military or religious power and/or influence do not advance and in fact only distort this quest for truth. 

During the Academic Freedom Conference on April 26th, the erosion of tenure, adjunct faculty, the corporatization of universities' mission and the persecution of professors who dare to engage in controversial topics such as 9/11 Truth, JFK assassination and Holocaust revision will be discussed as examples of issues that should not be "off limits" but all-too-often are.

Subjects such as 9/11 and its impact on Israel or even Israel's alleged complicity in 9/11 events definitely meet the criteria of being a critical societal issue, if for no other reason the consideration of the vast amount of publications devoted to this. Hundreds if not thousands of books and millions of webpages have been written about the history and unfolding definition of Israel and the events of 9/11 for example are an undeniably etched into this record. 

Dual Israeli/American citizens, for example, were deeply involved in the ownership, privatization, cleanup, rebuilding, adjudication, victim compensation, investigation and media coverage of the destruction of the WTC complex. The widespread accusations that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which were immediately executed in the aftermath of 9/11 (like Vietnam/Gulf of Tonkin issue), are further evidence supporting the belief by millions all over the world that a plan was being executed. (and Patriot Act, NSA ... etc.) There is no doubt the these subjects meet the criteria of being critical societal issues.

The legacy of this unfolding account of Israel's leadership behavior is a sad and controversial mess. The most recent news involves the Israel's plans to re-invade Gaza that is the home of over a million prisoners of the 'state' of Israel as a result of its creation, which in itself is highly related to the focus of this conference.  

Insofar as political, military or religious power and influence do not advance and in fact only distort this quest for truth within academic communities, we need to emancipate the hopefully unbiased intellectual power of universities to sort this out and bring sanity back to our society.

Here is Jim Fetzer's article on the conference:

Noam Chomsky, temporary faculty and the future of academic freedom
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By Jim Fetzer

While I have severely criticized Noam Chomsky, whom I regard as a left-wing gatekeeper on the major issues of our time, including the assassination of JFK and the atrocities of 9/11–where he dismisses conspiracy theories about the former on the ground that his death involved no major policy issues and on the latter that it looks to him as though typical bureaucratic blundering let it happen–he has recently madeastute observations about the demise of tenure at American universities.
The institution of tenure, which grants faculty a permanent position within the university, was intended to insulate those who take on complex, controversial and politically loaded issues, such as JFK and 9/11, to be secure from retaliation by administrations who are subservient to the influence of their boards of trustees and the typically more conservative community at large.
The protection that tenure provides has been gradually waning of later, however, because more and more institutions of higher learning are adopting a business model, where cost-benefit calculations are made on the basis of dollars and cents rather than truth and evidence. When there are fewer and fewer tenured positions, there are fewer and fewer faculty who are willing to engage in controversial issues, where the very institutions on which the public depends for objectivity and rationality, much like the mass media today, no longer serve the public interest as they were originally envisioned.

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Thus, as Chomsky has observed, there has been a distinct trend toward hiring temporary (or “adjunct”) faculty in lieu of those on tenure-tracks, which has been a boon for the bottom line but a major loss for society:
That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps.
>. . . [W]hen Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed.
>Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it.
Very much like the use of part time employees who are deliberately not given enough work hours to have benefits (such as vacation time, retirement benefits or potential bonuses), the use of adjunct faculty makes it far cheaper for universities to conduct their business and enhance their profit margins. But they become less and less responsive to the crucial need of society for objective and unbiased analyses of the problems that the people confront, whether that entails understanding the economy, accurate employment figures, the pluses and minuses of adopting different public policies–or the truth about JFK, 9/11 or other complex and controversial topics, such as what did and did not happen during World War II.

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Conference: “Academic Freedom: Are there Limits to Inquiry?”

A conference entitled, “Academic Freedom: Are there Limits to Inquiry?”, will be held at the University of Illinois UC, Illini Union, Room 314A, from 9 AM-6 PM/CT on 26 April 2014. The idea for this conference originated with Stephen Francis, who also organized The Midwest 9/11 Truth Conference, which was held at the Urbana Free Library on 22 September 2013, featuring Kevin Barrett, Jim Fetzer and Wayne Madsen as speakers. See “The Complete Midwest 9/11 Truth Conference” on Veterans Today.
Stephen Francis
As presently envisioned, registration will be held from 9 AM-10 AM/CT, with Kevin Barrett presenting the first lecture from 10 AM-11:00 AM/CT, followed by Cary Nelson from 11 AM to Noon/CT. The lunch break from Noon-1 PM/CT will be followed by a presentation by Rima Kapitan from 1-2 PM/CT, which will in turn be followed by Nick Kollerstrom from 2-3 PM/CT. Since Nick resides in London, he will join us via Skype. Jim Fetzer will speak from 3-4 PM/CT, with a panel discussion and questions and debate with the audience from 4-6.
Three of the speakers–Barrett, Kollerstrom, and Fetzer–have had experience as faculty with complex and controversial issues, while two of us–Nelson and Kapitan–are professionals who are involved with academic freedom issues in relation to the faculty and their clients. By focusing on three “hot” topics, JFK, 9/11 and the Holocaust, they aim at sharpening public understanding of what should be expected of colleges and university. In particular, they will address, “Are there limits to what faculty can research?” and “Are there limits to what they can teach?”, where these speakers appear to be especially well-positioned to address these extremely important but themselves sensitive subjects.
SCHEDULED SPEAKERS:
Kevin Barrett, Ph.D.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. In the early 1990s, Barrett received master’s degrees in both English literature and French from San Francisco State University. He received a Ph.D. in African languages and literature with a minor in folklore from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2004.
He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. He is co-editor of 9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews and Muslims Speak Out (2007) and the author of Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and of Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009).
Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. He ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. His web sites include VeteransToday/Barrett, TruthJihad, TruthJihadRadio and MUJCA (Muslim Christian Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth).
Cary Nelson, Ph.D.
Cary Nelson received a B.A. from Antioch College in Ohio (1967) and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in New York (1970). Since 1970, has taught modern poetry and literary theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English.
His twenty-five books include Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities (1994), Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis (1997),Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education (1999), Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left (2001), and Office Hours : Activism and Change in the Academy (2004).
Cary has been concerned with issues of academic freedom and tenure, especially having served as the 2nd Vice President of the American Association of University Professors from 2000-06, and as the President of the AAUP 2006-2012.
Rima Kapitan, J.D.
Rima is the owner of Kapitan Law Office in Chicago, IL. Her practice consists primarily of litigation on behalf of employees and advising of businesses on employment law matters. In recent years she has increasingly focused on academic cases, representing employees in appeals of tenure denials and employment litigation in free speech and discrimination cases.
She has spoken on the topic of academic freedom at conferences of the American Association of University Professors, the Illinois AAUP and California State University- Fresno. She has served as a judge at the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.
Ms. Kapitan is a graduate of DePaul University College of Law and Indiana University’s Individualized Major Program. She was admitted to practice by the State of Illinois Supreme Court in 2005 and is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the United States District Court for the Northern, Central and Southern Districts of Illinois.
Nicholas Kollerstrom, Ph.D.
Nicholas Kollerstrom, Ph.D., has two history of science degrees, one from Cambridge 1968, plus a PhD from London, 1995. He was an honorary member of staff of UCL for 11 years.
He co-edited The Case Against War (Spokesman, 2004) comprising the CND legal arguments against the Iraq war) and then co-organized the Belgrano Inquiry in 1986, publishing The Unnecessary War (1998) as its proceedings.
In 2008 he received widespread publicity and ethical damnation for his interest in studies of the residual cyanide levels found in walls of the WWII labor-camps.
His recent book, Terror on the Tube (3rd ed., 2011) is the most comprehensive account of the 2005 London bombings. It supports the conclusion that this was a “false flag” attack.
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
A former Marine Corps officer, Jim Fetzer has published widely on the theoretical foundations of scientific knowledge, computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and evolution and mentality.
Distinguished McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, he has also conducted extensive research into the assassination of JFK, the events of 9/11, and the plane crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone.
The founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, his latest books include The Evolution of Intelligence (2005), The 9/11 Conspiracy (2007), Render Unto Darwin (2007), and The Place of Probability in Science (2010). Since his retirement, he has devoted himself to dealing with the most complex and controversial events of recent history on “The Real Deal” and in his articles on Veterans Today.
UPDATE: Additional speaker announced

Winfield J. Abbe, Ph.D.
Winfield Abbe received an A.B. degree in physics from the University of California Berkeley, M.S. in physics from California State University at Los Angeles and Ph.D. in physics from the University of California Riverside. His main areas of research are low temperature solid state physics and theoretical elementary particle physics.
He has also spent some time working on the long standing problem of Fermat’s Last Theorem which was recently solved, but the esoteric solution is known and understood by only a handful of people in the world. Dr. Abbe was a faculty member at the University of Georgia, Athens and an Institute of Science and Technology Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
During his career in academe, he has observed gross abuses senior faculty have administered to junior and the deterioration of the practice of academic freedom, which he looks forward to addressing during the conference.
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Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a journalist and editor for Veterans Today.
Related Posts:
	* Interview with Philosopher of Science Dr. James Henry Fetzer
	* The War on Truth: Research on the Holocaust can End your Career
	* Dear Cass Sunstein: PLEASE cognitively infiltrate me!
	* Guilty demeanor: The private 9/11 emails of Noam Chomsky
	* Chomsky covers up world’s worst-ever war crime
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=291663

Thank you,
Steve Francis
... ... Event
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