Noncoercive Threats to Academic, Political, and Economic Freedom - by Akeel Bilgrami & Jonathan R Cole

About the Book

"Some people might object that exploring subtler, noncoercive threats to academic freedom, which the essays in the present volume set out to do, is a somewhat rarified undertaking at a time when brazenly authoritarian populist nationalist regimes have ascended to power in so many parts of the world. But such regimes often operate noncoercively by manipulating liberal frameworks, including the media, in illiberal directions. As with their previous volume, Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom?, Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan R. Cole look at unfreedom-threats to freedom-in order to come to an understanding of what the relevant notion of freedom amounts to. This circumscribed approach is necessary because the concept is too omnibus, too variously theorized, and too contested to approach directly. Examining what at first sight look like specific threats allows us to determine whether on closer scrutiny they are such and if so what they can tell us about the nature of the freedom that is threatened. Collectively the book seeks to illuminate the subject of freedom by exploring the nature and kinds of unfreedom that emerge as a result of noncoercive threats"--

Book Synopsis

States and institutions in both conventionally authoritarian and formally democratic societies overtly circumscribe freedom in any number of ways. Yet there are also subtler forms by which authorities and cultural forces compromise the choices of individuals in ways that do not seem, at first glance, to be coercive. This book brings together a distinguished set of scholars to examine covert constraints on academic, political, and economic freedom from a variety of angles, developing surprising and timely new insights.

Ranging across philosophy, economics, law, health, science, art, and the media, luminaries from different fields expose threats to freedom within avowedly liberal and democratic institutions and cultures. Their incisive essays, both analytical and historical, emphasize how economic inequality, academic orthodoxy, media control, racism, and gender roles undermine the potential for human flourishing. By considering such multifarious noncoercive threats, they illuminate the vexed notion of freedom. Lively and learned, this book offers a provocative and urgent understanding of the often-unacknowledged forces that restrict our choices.

Contributors include David Bromwich, Eric Foner, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Ignatieff, Laura Kipnis, Anya Schiffrin, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Geoffrey R. Stone. In an essay and an interview with the volume editors, Noam Chomsky addresses the neoliberal assault on academic freedom.

About the Author

Akeel Bilgrami is Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University.

Jonathan R. Cole is John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University at Columbia University, where he was provost and dean of faculties from 1989 to 2003.

Bilgrami and Cole are the editors of Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom? (Columbia, 2015).