U. of Illinois Professor Nelson to speak Feb. 28

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign English Professor and author Cary Nelson, Ph.D., will speak about academic freedom Friday, Feb. 28 at 3:30 p.m. in McEachern Lecture Hall of Furman Hall on the Furman University campus.

His talk is based on his most recent book, No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom (NYU Press, 2010) in which he unveils struggles over governance and unionization and the increasing corporatization of higher education.

His lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the A.S. Reid Fund and the following Furman University departments: Communication Studies, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Education, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology.

Dr. Nelson is former president of the American Association of University Professors whose purpose is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.

Nelson will also be giving a keynote address Saturday, March 1 at the state chapter of the AAUP’s annual conference hosted by Furman University, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., in McEachern Lecture Hall.

Nelson is the Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among his 27 books are Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (also published by NYU) and the landmark coedited collection Cultural Studies.

For more information about the event, contact Furman’s News and Information Office at 864-294-3107.