Universities at Risk: How Politics, Special Interests and Corporatization Threaten Academic Integrity

• James Turk (ed)
• James Lorimer & Company, 2008
• Paperback, 416 pages
• ISBN: 9781552770405

Universities at Risk, a group of leading scholars in education, ethics, politics and medicine, among other areas, probe the forces that are threatening the integrity of post-secondary education, from both within and without. This book delves into the subject of corporate sponsorship, exploring the influences of powerful industries -- tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, for example. The book also discusses the struggle for credibility and threat to free inquiry when special interest groups, right-wing think tanks, and discredited popular movements (such as intelligent design) infiltrate academia. Chapters on the middle eastern studies and First Nations universities look at external politics that inhibit intellectual freedom. The more insidious trends toward corporatization and "managerializing" the university also come under scrutiny. This timely book concludes with a discussion about why preserving academic integrity -- despite the clamorous voices of the forces threatening it --is so vital to public interest.

Contributors include: Brian Alters, Gary Bauslaugh, Mary Burgan. Joanna Cohen, Rosemary Deem, Shadia Drury, Brenda Gallie, Donald Gutstein, Marcus Harvey, David Healy, Michael Higgins, Sheldon Krimsky, Kevin Mattson, Arthur Schafer, Blair Stonechild, Jon Thompson, Pat Walden.

JAMES TURK is Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).  Formerly an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and Director of Education for the Ontario Federation of Labour, he is a frequent media contributor and has written many articles on education and labour in Canada. His two most recent books are Free Speech in Fearful Times: After 9/11 in Canada, the U.S., Australia and Europe (edited with Allan Manson) and Disciplining Dissent: The Curbing of Free Expression in Academia and the Media</I> (edited with William Bruneau).