The Politics of Academic Freedom.
Institutional leaders, faculty, students, and the public need a better understanding of why academic freedom is essential to student learning and to a democracy characterized by open, reasoned, and vigorous political discourse.
Examining the Idea of the ‘Vulnerable Student’ to Assess the Implications for Academic Freedom
This paper analyses the concept of vulnerability as it is applied to university students, and also staff, to assess the extent to which it has become a new norm that transforms the understanding of the individual—from being more robust, towards a more fragile sense of personhood. We examine the changing use of the term ‘vulnerable’ over time and with reference to the institutionalisation of the ‘vulnerable subject’. The paper relates this to the theoretical discussion about postmodernism and the ‘end of truth’ within academia, with the subsequent emergence of safe spaces as a mechanism for protecting the vulnerable student. Using snowball sampling, a pilot ethnographic study of academics who have experienced, or claim to have experienced, limits on their academic freedom is developed. One conclusion is that limits to academic freedom stem from within the academy itself. This conclusion is related to the growing understanding that student ‘wellbeing’ necessitates the regulation and ‘policing’ of knowledge and ideas that are deemed to be offensive to the vulnerable student.
Velocity moments in alongshore bottom stress parameterizations
The time-averaged alongshore bottom stress is an important component of nearshore circulation models. In a widely accepted formulation the bottom stress is proportional to , the time average of the product of the instantaneous velocity magnitude |u→| and the instantaneous alongshore velocity component υ. Both mean and fluctuating (owing to random, directionally spread waves) velocities contribute to . Direct estimation of requires a more detailed specification of the velocity field than is usually available, so the term is parameterized. Here direct estimates of based on time series of near-bottom currents observed between the shoreline and 8-m water depth are used to test the accuracy of parameterizations. Common parameterizations that are linear in the mean alongshore current significantly underestimate for moderately strong alongshore currents, resulting in overestimation of a drag coefficient determined by fitting modeled (with a linearized bottom stress) to observed alongshore currents. A parameterization based on a joint-Gaussian velocity field with the observed velocity statistics gives excellent overall agreement with the directly estimated and allows analytic investigation of the statistical properties of the velocity field that govern . Except for the weakest flows, depends strongly on the mean alongshore current and the total velocity variance but depends only weakly on the mean wave angle, wave directional spread, and mean cross-shore current. Several other nonlinear parameterizations of are shown to be more accurate than the linear parameterizations and are adequate for many modeling purposes.