How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning?

The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or
grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors?

It’s Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Berube and Jennifer Ruth
take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy–theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles–one, the question of when a professor’s intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and
two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion–they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the
traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.

In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Berube and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom.
Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It’s Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Faculty across the nation can develop protocols that
account for both the new realities–from the rise of social media to the decline of tenure–and the old realities of long-standing inequities and abuses that the classic liberal conception of academic freedom did nothing to address. This book will resonate for anyone who has followed debates over #MeToo,
Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and “cancel culture”; more specifically, it should have a major impact on many facets of academic life, from the classroom to faculty senates to the office of the general counsel.

The story of Jamie Bérubé’s journey to adulthood and a meditation on disability in American life

Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves the Beatles, pizza, and making lists. When he is asked in his preschool class what he would like to be when he grows up, he responds with one word: big. At four, he is like many kids his age, but his Down syndrome prevents most people from seeing him as anything but disabled.

Twenty years later, Jamie is no longer little, though he still jams to the Beatles, eats pizza, and makes endless lists of everything—from the sixty-seven counties of Pennsylvania (in alphabetical order, from memory) to the various opponents of the wrestler known as the Undertaker.

In Life as Jamie Knows It, Michael Bérubé chronicles his son’s journey to adulthood and his growing curiosity and engagement with the world. Writing as both a disability studies scholar and a father, he follows Jamie through his social and academic experiences in school, his evolving relationships with his parents and brother, Nick, his encounters with illness, and the complexities of entering the workforce with a disability. As Jamie matures, his parents acknowledge his entitlement to a personal sense of independence, whether that means riding the bus home from work on his own, taking himself to a Yankees game, or deciding which parts of his story are solely his to share.

With a combination of stirring memoir and sharp intellectual inquiry, Bérubé tangles with bioethicists, politicians, philosophers, and anyone else who sees disability as an impediment to a life worth living. Far more than the story of an exceptional child growing up to be “big,” Life as Jamie Knows It challenges us to rethink how we approach disability and is a passionate call for moving toward a more just, more inclusive society.