Date:
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Please register to attend this event here.
Please save the date for an upcoming symposium hosted by the Department of History titled “Perspectives on Academic Freedom.” This in-person day-long symposium will take place on Thursday, April 25, 2024 at the Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South, S010, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. We are grateful to the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs for their sponsorship of this event.
In 2019, alarmed by attacks on academic freedom happening simultaneously in several parts of the world (Brazil, India, Turkey, and the USA, among others), a group of faculty in the History Department decided to organize a year-long seminar series to discuss the role of academics in an age of advancing authoritarianism. The pandemic derailed our plans. The crises of the past few months have given us a new sense of urgency. How can the university remain a place of unfettered critical inquiry and expression when its mission is overtly challenged by corporate and governing interests?
The revised program is detailed below:
10:15 am: Opening remarks, by Sugata Bose
10:30 to 11:45 am: William Kirby, Harvard University (keynote address): University Governance and Academic Freedom, moderated by David Armitage
11:45 am to 1:00 pm: Lunch Break
1:00 to 2:30 pm, Panel 1: Academic Freedom around the Globe
Jayati Ghosh, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu, Brandeis University
Sidney Chalhoub, Harvard University
Moderated by Cemal Kafadar
2:30 to 3:00 pm: Coffee Break
3:00 to 4:00 pm: Joan Scott (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), joining on Zoom, interviewed by Kirsten Weld and Sidney Chalhoub
4:00 to 5:30 pm, Panel 2: Academic Freedom in the US
Durba Mitra, Harvard University
Beshara Doumani, Brown University
Brian Connolly, University of South Florida
Moderated by Rosie Bsheer
This event is open to members of the Harvard community only. Please bring your Harvard ID for check in.