Academic Freedom: A Bibliography
Academic freedom is a subject with many facets: academic freedom of public and private school teachers, of university professors, of universities themselves, and of students. In this bibliography, I have concentrated on articles about academic freedom at a post-secondary level. There are some articles concerning the academic freedom of universities, but most deal with professors. Because this issue celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, I have examined publications only from 1940 to the present. The books included are those that focus mainly on academic freedom, rather than those with only a small section on that topic. The articles deal with the legal aspects of academic freedom, and almost all are from legal periodicals.' All materials are in English and concern academic freedom issues in the United States. Within the criteria stated above, I have tried to be comprehensive in my search for materials. I have searched both through the legal journal indexes and through the footnotes of the articles themselves. Omitted entirely are articles about specific challenges to academic freedom reported on in the journal of the American Association of University Professors, at different times called Academe and the AA UP Bulletin. The association has devoted much space to particular academic freedom cases, and anyone interested in these reports need only look at individual issues of the journal.
Academic freedom in the U.K.: legal and normative protection in a comparative context [Report for the University and College Union]
This report examines the legal (de jure) and normative (de facto) protection for academic freedom in the UK, when compared with the other 27 EU nations. The legal protection is assessed first, by examining the EU nations’ constitutions and legislative instruments; second, by means of an assessment of individual nations’ degree of compliance with UNESCO’s 1997 Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel; and third by means of a very detailed analysis of 37 differing elements of university compliance with an array of measures, such as international instruments, but also including (for example) the ability of academic staff to appoint or dismiss the Rector, Deans and Heads of Departments. In sharp contrast with the other 27 EU nations, the constitutional protection for academic freedom (either directly, or indirectly via freedom of speech) in the UK is negligible, as is the legislative protection for the substantive (teaching and learning) and supportive (tenure and governance) elements of academic freedom. Additionally, the UK is similarly deficit in protecting academic freedom in line with international agreements of which it is a signatory, more especially UNESCO’s 1997 Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel. Utilising the most comprehensive assessment of the constitutional and legal protection of academic freedom, the UK attains a score of 35%, which is less than the EU average (53%), and the second lowest among the 28 EU states. 
The analysis of normative de facto protection uses comparable data from over 2000 UCU members and 5000 staff in universities of the European states, gathered by means of similar surveys. It demonstrates that the low level of de jure protection for academic freedom in the UK is mirrored by an equally poor (if not worse) level of de facto protection. The reality is that, in the overwhelming majority of instances, UCU members report statistically significantly higher levels of systematic abuse of their academic freedom, across a wide array of measures, than their European counterparts. For example, 23.1% of UCU respondents (and 14.1% of EU respondents) reported being bullied on account of their academic views, 26.6% of UCU respondents reported being subjected to psychological pressure (EU = 15.7%), while 35.5% of the UCU cohort admitted to self-censorship, for fear of negative repercussions, such as loss of privileges, demotion, physical harm (EU = 19.1%). Some of this abuse may be attributable to a lack of knowledge of academic freedom rights among staff – only 41.7% of the UCU cohort claimed to have an adequate working knowledge of academic freedom (EU = 49.2), while less than half that proportion (20.6%) knew about the 1988 Education Reform Act, which supposedly protects academic freedom in the UK. Not surprisingly, 81.6% of UCU respondents said they would welcome additional information on the concept of academic freedom and its rights and responsibilities. Furthermore, UCU members are much more likely to strongly agree than their European counterparts that the major elements of academic freedom (freedom for teaching and research, autonomy, shared governance and employment protection) have declined. 
In sum the very low level of legal protection in the UK is mirrored by a low level of awareness of the rights of academic freedom, and a high level of abus
Using Fuzzy-Delphi technique to determine the concession period in BOT projects
BOT projects are affected by several risks and uncertainties. One of the most important issues in this type of contract is to determine the length of concession period considering these uncertainties. The previous studies have developed several models to determine the concession period. However, the uncertainties are not taking into account in most of the previous works. Moreover, none of the previous researches has the capability to aggregate the opinions of different experts being involved in a project regarding the values of the uncertain input parameters. In this research, a Fuzzy-Delphi technique is implemented to determine the length of concession period considering uncertainties. Using the proposed Fuzzy-Delphi technique, the values of different uncertain factors affecting a BOT project is determined considering opinions of a group of experts. The NPV value is calculated considering the resulted aggregated values of uncertain input parameters. Finally, the concession period is determined using fuzzy approach. A case study is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology. It is shown that the concession period is determined more effectively using the proposed approach.