Joining us for our latest Free Exchange on Campus interview is Robert O'Neil.  Professor O'Neil is the founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.  He is also a formidable legal scholar, former president of the University of Virginia, and author of the recently released book, Academic Freedom in the Wired World: Political Extremism, Corporate Power, and the University.  We asked O'Neil for his thoughts about the challenges facing academic freedom in the 21^st Century and for an update on some of his current projects.

the whole interview is beneath the fold...

Women's studies departments have long been the bête noir of David Horowitz and other critics of higher education who frequently like to cite the discipline as an example of indoctrination in higher education.  What's become exceedingly clear after (too many hours of) reading these complaints is that these critics don't actually seem to know what really goes on in a class on women's studies.  We recently had an opportunity to chat with Allison Kimmich, the executive director of the National Women's Studies Association.  After the jump, we take the opportunity to explore the discipline from a fact-based perspective.

Today, the American Federation of Teachers, a memberof the Free Exchange on Campus coalition, released Academic Freedom in the21st-Century College and University: Academic Freedom for All Faculty andInstructional Staff (pdf). This new policy statement was developed over the past year with theinvolvement of AFT Higher Education's program and policy council. As with otherpolicy and best practices statements of the division, this one was distributedand widely discussed at the annual higher education issues meeting, which tookplace in Portland, Ore., in March. Comments and suggestionswere incorporated into the final document.

Recently, for AFT On Campus, I asked the statement's primary author, Art Hochner, totalk about the context for this statement, which is the first formal statementthe AFT has released on academic freedom. Hochner is president of the Temple Associationof University Professionals/AFT and an associate professor of human resourcemanagement in the business school at TempleUniversity.

Read the full interview after the jump.