professorsheehan

#Media / #News / #Scholarship / #Inquiries / #UB

SHEEHAN | Iran’s Assault on Academic Freedom | The Hill | Op-Ed | 11 September 2016

On the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan – Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs – weighs in at the congressional newspaper The Hill to call attention to the importance of “Academic Freedom” and to highlight its importance to democratic discourse in the Middle East. Learn more about the valuable work undertaken by the US-based organization Scholars at Risk, a network of individuals and academic institutions that promotes the principles of academic freedom around the globe.

Excerpts via @TheHill: In totalitarian societies, power is maintained in part by the control of memory and reinvention of the past. While all societies promote a collective history, totalitarian states tend to advocate a single authorized version. In contemporary Iran, revolutionary ideology and memory itself has been reconstructed to erase any trace of the role of democratic-leaning students and academics in creating an official narrative that implies that the revolution was not about freedom or rights but only about Islamic identity. Recovering silenced accounts of the past has the potential to challenge dominant narratives and become a tool for advocates for change…

…As the world pays tribute to the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is important for U.S. officials to champion the freedom to think, write and teach freely and consider all of the implications this has for the development of tolerant and pluralistic societies. By supporting academic freedom as a universal commitment, U.S. leaders can make a small contribution toward a more democratic discourse in the Middle East and uphold a basic value too often taken for granted in the West. #PDF

Dr. Sheehan is the Director of the graduate programs in Negotiations & Conflict Management and Global Affairs & Human Security in the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore.

For additional research or media related updates or to learn more about Dr. Sheehan, follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan or link to his research profiles.

Social Media: @ProfSheehan / @PublicAffairsUB

Screenshots: #I #II #III #IV #V

/ #About / #News / #Scholarship /

This entry was posted on September 11, 2016 at 11:17 PM and is filed under 9-11, academic freedom, advisory board, Al Jazeera, american political science association, analysis, APSA, authoritarian, Ayatollah Khomeini, baghdad, bipartisan, CIA, civil liberties, civil unrest, college of public affairs, congress, counterterrorism, debate, Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom, democracy, democrat, diplomacy, dissident, Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, education, european union, foreign policy, foreign policy analysis, freedom, fundamentalism, global, human rights, human security, international order, international relations, international studies association, iran, iranian revolution, iraq, irgc, ISA, ISIS, israel, Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Joint Statement on the Right to Education and Academic Freedom in Iran, leadership, media, middle east, obama, policy, political repression, political science, politics, Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan, protest, regime change, regime change from within, republican, research, rouhani, scholarly, senate, senate foreign relations committee, sheehan, social science, state department, teaching, tehran, terror tagging, terrorism, the hill, think-tank, threat, turkey, U.N. General Assembly, u.s. foundation for liberty, united nations, unrest, white house, yemen with tags @ProfSheehan, @PublicAffairsUB, American Political Science Association, College of Public Affairs, Congress, Counterterrorism, Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Global Affairs and Human Security Graduate Program, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, israel, Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Middle East, Negotiation and Conflict Management Graduate Program, Policy, Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Regime Change, School of Public and International Affairs, Sheehan, Terrorism, White House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.