Over the past three decades, the overall percentage of women receiving degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--known collectively as the STEM disciplines--has increased dramatically. This growth tends to mask at least three other aspects of the demographics of the science and technology workforce. Unfortunately, aggregated…

This letter, requested by University of California Berkeley's president, discusses the issues of academic freedom and responsibility raised by the controversy surrounding "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," a section of English taught there in fall 2002. (EV)

Asserts that at least three things can be said with growing confidence about what has happened in the academy since September 11. First, academic freedom has suffered as a result of government measures. Second, the impact of the governmental response has been less severe than many would have feared. Third, the most important and troubling…

Asserts that current campaigns to recruit undergraduates to "spy" on their professors--including Campus Watch and No Indoctrination--have not been enthusiastically received by today's college students; more significant, even conservative student are publicly either lukewarm or opposed to attempts to curtail academic freedom. (EV)

This article contains the transcript of a speech that Robert ONeil delivered on June 12 in Washington, D.C., at the Ninetieth Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors. ONeil is professor of law and former president of the University of Virginia, where he directs the Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free…

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax bioterrorism mailings, the science community and others worried that technical articles might inadvertently aid those planning acts of terrorism. Some authors asked the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) for permission to withhold critical information from…

In the wake of September 11, 2001, and in light of heightened concerns about terrorism and the proliferation of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, the U.S. government has implemented a series of measures to regulate and monitor the flow of international students and scholars into the United States. Some of these measures are designed to…

Just more than twenty years ago, the author had the privilege of directing a National Academy of Sciences panel that issued a report entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," known informally as the Corson Report, after Dale Corson, the panel's chair and president emeritus of Cornell University. Thus, for him, today's discussions…

The effects of government restraints on the process of free interaction between scientists is discussed. The careless application of export control laws to the transfer of information is described. Applicable statutes include: the Atomic Energy Act, the Invention Secrecy Act, the Arms Export Control Act, etc. (MLW)

The practice of excluding aliens because of their beliefs, political utterances, or party affiliations is discussed. The historical use of immigration law to stifle dissent is described, along with a bill that would repeal the ideological exclusion provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act. (MLW)