(via Emily Ford, ACRL-Oregon President)
ACRL-Oregon offers free webinars on topics relevant to academic library staff. Our upcoming webinar is “Academic Freedom and Libraries” and will be presented by Aaron Roussell, Ph.D, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University on Thursday, April 28, at 2:00 PM CDT.
Academic Freedom and Libraries
This webinar will establish some basic understandings regarding academic freedom, its role in the academy, and how it differs from free speech. We will touch on the importance of norms, values, university co-governance, and collective movement for the maintenance of academic freedom and discuss the threats to it, from university administration, to reactionary legislatures, Koch funded interest groups, and different forms of external harassment. We will then begin discussing in small groups our personal, collegial, and institutional needs, fears, and threats to begin crafting organizing strategies to prepare for potential future negative
events.
Aaron Roussell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University. His research and teaching projects focus on race, class, and social danger through quantitative and ethnographic methods, specifically with respect to policing, state violence, and drugs. He is the co-author of The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian power and police accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles (2019, NYU Press). Aaron joined his first union (UAW 2865) in 2007 and has served academic unions in a variety of roles including shop steward, Vice President for Academic Freedom and Grievances, and Executive Councilor for the PSU-American Association of University Professors union chapter. He continues to organize in a variety of ways in his various communities.
Registration is open to any library staff-person, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon! To register, please go here.
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session. Questions about our webinars can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Emily Ford at acrlor@olaweb.org.