There are currently no books on Catholic higher education that offer a theological foundation for academic freedom. This book presents a theologically grounded understanding of academic freedom that builds on, extends, and completes the prevailing secular understanding for Catholic higher education.

There are currently no books on Catholic higher education that offer a theological foundation for academic freedom. This book presents a theologically grounded understanding of academic freedom that builds on, extends, and completes the prevailing secular understanding for Catholic higher education.

Kenneth Garcia presents an edited collection of papers from the 2015 conference on academic freedom at religiously affiliated universities, held at the University of Notre Dame. These essays reexamine the secular principle of academic freedom and discuss how a theological understanding might build on and further develop it. The year 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the leading advocate of academic freedom in America. In October 2015, the University of Notre Dame convened a group of prominent scholars to consider how the concept and practice of academic freedom might evolve. The premise behind the conference was that the current conventional understandings of academic freedom are primarily secular and, therefore, not yet complete. The goal was to consider alternative understandings in light of theological insight. Theological insight, in this context, refers to an awareness that there is a surplus of knowledge and meaning to reality that transcends what can be known through ordinary disciplinary methods of inquiry, especially those that are quantitative or empirical. Essays in this volume discuss how, in light of the fact that findings in many fields hint at connections to a greater whole, scholars in any academic field should be free to pursue those connections. Moreover, there are religious traditions that can help inform those connections.

The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom is a study of the past record and current practice of the Protestant colleges in America in the quest to achieve intellectual honesty within academic community. William C. Ringenberg lays out the history of academic freedom in higher education in America, including its European antecedents, from the perspective of modern Christian higher education. He discusses the Christian values that provide context for the idea of academic freedom and how they have been applied to the nation's Christian colleges and universities. The book also dissects a series of recent case studies on the major controversial intellectual issues within and in, in some cases, about the Christian college community. Ringenberg ably analyzes the ways in which these academic institutions have evolved over time, outlining their efforts to evolve and remain relevant while maintaining their core values and historic identities.

This volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the life and legacy of Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917–2015), an educator, priest, public servant, and long-serving President of the University of Notre Dame. Despite being a transformative figure in Catholic higher education who led the University of Notre Dame for 35 years and wielded influence with US presidents on civil rights and other charged issues of his era, secular accounts of history often neglect to assess the efforts of religious figures such as Hesburgh. In this volume, the editors and their authors turn a fair-minded but critical eye to the priest's record to evaluate where he fits into the long development of Catholic higher education and Catholics' role in American public life.

As part of the most concerned country, Malaysia has provided clear written legal statutes in promoting and protecting the freedom of speech. Articles 10(1)(a) and (2)(a) of the Federal Constitution provides the clearest indication to the general public that the legal system of our country do give the protection of the freedom of speech. The objective of this paper is to focus on the provisions of the freedom of speech (especially academic freedom) from the related statutes and cases reported in the relevant journals. This paper will also focus on the scope, wisdoms, purposes and provide the possible recommendations or suggestions; in the area of the implementation of the civil law and the Islamic legal principles in the Malaysian legal system, in order to strengthen, enhance and harmonizing these respective laws in force, which deal with the academic freedom issues for the purpose of protecting and promoting the freedom of speech in Malaysia according to the rule of law. The legal research method will be applied in obtaining the relevant data and information. The writer is of the opinion that the Malaysian legal system should be transformed and harmonized between these two legal foundations, i.e., the civil law and the Islamic legal principles, in respecting the spirit of Article 3 of the Federal Constitution which provides that Islam as a religion of the Federation. The academicians should be given the autonomy to express their opinion that can contribute to the betterment of the society.

American Catholic universities and colleges are wrestling today with how to develop in ways that faithfully serve their mission in Catholic higher education without either secularizing or becoming sectarian. Major challenges are faced when trying to simultaneously build and sustain excellence in undergraduate teaching, strengthen faculty research and publishing, and deepen the authentically Catholic character of education. This book uses the particular case of the University of Notre Dame to raise larger issues, to make substantive proposals, and thus to contribute to a national conversation affecting all Catholic universities and colleges in the United States (and perhaps beyond) today. Its arguments focus particularly on challenging questions around the recruitment, hiring, and formation of faculty in Catholic universities and colleges.