On Tuesday 13 March 2018, Geoffrey Galt Harpham of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University presented a seminar at JIAS on ‘Scholarship and Freedom’, jointly hosted by JIAS and the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies at UJ.

Background

All over the world, universities and academic work generally are being placed under pressure by governments, by the constant increase in corporate sponsored research, and often by hostile public opinion. Is scholarship really value-neutral, or does it contain an implicit set of values, even a politics or an ideology, that might conflict with others?
Geoffrey Galt Harpham is a Senior Fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. He previously served as director of the National Humanities Center (2002-2015), and taught at Tulane University, Brandeis University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

A specialist in literary theory, linguistics, and the history of criticism, he is the author of nearly one hundred scholarly articles and ten books, most recently The Humanities and the Dream of America, and What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez?: The American Revolution in Education.