Brooklyn College Library LibGuides Home: Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities 2023-24: Academic Freedom Events During Hess Week: April 1-3, 2024

Academic Freedom Events During Hess Week: April 1-3, 2024

Defending the Freedom to Learn
Monday April 1, 2024
2:15 PM to 3:30 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library

Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture and the Brooklyn College School of Education

This panel explores how book bans and curriculum gag orders deny K-12 and college students’ freedom to learn and access to education.

Introductory Remarks: April Whatley Bedford, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Brooklyn College

Emily Drabinski, President of the American Library Association; Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College
Nishani Frazier, Professor of History and Director of Public History at North Carolina State University
Paul Ortiz, Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida; Robert L. Hess Scholar 2023-24

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Defending the Freedom to Teach
Tuesday April 2, 2024
4:15 PM to 5:45 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library

Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture and the Brooklyn College School of Education

Randi Weingarten, AFT President, and Paul Ortiz, Hess Scholar, are joined by educators, activists, and lawyers for a discussion of the current political and ideological attacks on K-12 and college teachers’ freedom to teach.

Introductory remarks by María R. Scharrón-del Río, Dean of the School of Education and Professor in the School Counseling Graduate Program at Brooklyn College

Jose Jimenez, Principal of A.C.E. Academy for Scholars
Larry J. Leaven, Educator
Paul Ortiz, Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida; Robert L. Hess Scholar 2023-224
Karen Svodoba, Executive Director, Defense of Democracy
Emerson Sykes, Senior Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union
Randi Weingarten, President of AFT (American Federation of Teachers)

Moderator: Carla España, Assistant Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies and Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities Faculty Associate at Brooklyn College

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Union Power! Academic Freedom and the Future of Higher Education
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
12:50 PM to 2:05 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library

Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture and co-sponsored by the Brooklyn College Chapter of the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (PSC-CUNY)

The panel will explore the role of academic labor unions in defending academic freedom in the current political moment.

Sharon Austin, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida
Carolina Bank Muñoz, Chair of the Brooklyn College Chapter of the PSC-CUNY and Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College
Risa Lieberwitz, General Counsel of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and Professor of Labor and Employment Law at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR)
Paul Ortiz, Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida; President of United Faculty of Florida - UF (FEA/NEA/AFT/AFL-CIO; 2020-23); Robert L. Hess Scholar 2023-24

Moderator: Alan Aja, Professor and Department Chairperson of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College

Moderator: Gunja SenGupta, Professor of History at Brooklyn College

Sources by Paul Ortiz

Black History in Florida
Washington Post Interview with Paul Ortiz and Jonathan Capehart (August 2, 2023)

Can't Ban Us Day of Action
in Black History Teach-Ins in Florida and Beyond, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (February 25, 2023)

Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida

Making History Matter: Teaching Comparative African American and Latina/o Histories in an Age of Neoliberal Crisis
in Kalfou (Spring 2016)

Additional Sources

Our History Has Always Been Contraband by Colin Kaepernick (Editor); Robin D. G. Kelley (Editor); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor)
Publication Date: 2023
"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We're ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." --Colin Kaepernick Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum. Featuring writings by: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Saidiya Hartman, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and many others. Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. This volume also includes original essays by editors Kaepernick, Kelley, and Taylor, elucidating how we got here, and pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson detailing how we can fight back. To read Our History Has Always Been Contraband is to be an outlaw for liberation. These writings illuminate the ways we can collectively work toward freedom for all--through abolition, feminism, racial justice, economic empowerment, self-determination, desegregation, decolonization, reparations, queer liberation, cultural and artistic expression, and beyond.
Puerto Rican Studies in the City University of New York by María Pérez y González (Editor); Virginia Sánchez Korrol (Editor)
Call Number: F1970.8 .P85x 2021
ISBN: 1945662492
Publication Date: 2021-09-30
"Authored by leading scholars in the field of Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies, this volume is an important milestone in documenting the power of collective consciousness and action to create change in and access to higher education for all peoples. The book features a comprehensive fifty-year trajectory in the field of Puerto Rican Studies (PRS) at the City University of New York in a series of critical essays on scholarship, the social sciences, bilingual education, media, and its counterparts beyond CUNY, in addition to retrospectives from founders of the field, current professors, and alumni. The student founders of PRS, its pioneering faculty and groundbreaking interdisciplinary focus on the intersectionalities of race, culture, gender, power, and class, elucidate a contentious path to forging an anti-racist and decolonial pedagogy. The critical analysis in the scholarship found in this volume assesses the current status of Puerto Rican Studies in continuing to meet its academic mission, challenges and opportunities, and points to future directions in the 21st century."

Teaching at the Intersections: Liberatory and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogical Praxis in the Multicultural Counseling Classroom as a Queer Puerto Rican Educator by M.R. Scharrón-del Río
in Feminist Teacher, 27(2-3), 2017, 90-105.

Report of a Special Committee: Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida's Public Higher Education System
American Association of University Professors
December 2023

The Right-Wing Attacks on Higher Education: An Analysis of the State Legislative Landscape
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

Statement on Political Interference in Higher Education
American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
January 2024

America’s Censored Classrooms 2023: Lawmakers Shift Strategies as Resistance Rises
PEN America
November 2023

Educational Intimidation Bills
PEN America
August 2023

Banned in the USA: Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools
PEN America
September 2022

Indexes

Censorship by the Numbers: Mapping Challenges to the Freedom to Read
American Library Association
2022

Defensive Higher Ed Legislation
AFT
2023

Index of School Book Bans
PEN America
2022-2023

Index of Educational Gag Orders
PEN America
2024

Historic Documents

The Freedom to Read Statement
ALA Council & AAP Freedom to Read Committee
1953 (last amended in 2004)

Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
1940

Library &
Academic IT

Library & Academic IT

Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities 2023-24: Academic Freedom Events During Hess Week: April 1-3, 2024

Academic Freedom Events During Hess Week: April 1-3, 2024

Sources by Paul Ortiz

Additional Sources

Indexes

Historic Documents