Endangered Scholarship, Academic Freedom, and the Life of Critique

Abstract

The recent attack on academic programs and scholars is an effort to shut down critical thought, attesting to the link between critical theory and social transformation. Following Frantz Fanon's meditation on how questioning implicates embodied life, this essay lays out three trajectories for critique in an effort to oppose censorship, the criminalization of knowledge, and the destruction of both academic freedom and the politics of dissent. Focusing on recent attacks on gender studies, the essay argues that new alliances must be forged on a transnational model to support academic freedom, critical thought, and its important relation to democratic practices and ideals. It further suggests that academic freedom might be considered an international human right without making any claims about what the human is or can be. Finally, a case is made for the humanities in the field of critical theory, linking its practices of reading and judgment to the kinds of inquiry and forms of living that sustain the ideals of democracy.