When the author and his colleague Marsha Pripstein Posusney of Bryant College organized a workshop, entitled "The Study of the Middle East and Islam: Challenges after 9-11," at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, he naively assumed it would come off without friction. After all, he thought, they were not…

In this article, the author presents a debate discussing whether writing has nothing or everything to do with campus terrorism. Writing gives teachers a powerful tool to identify malfeasants and lunatics. Members of these groups have a need to disclose, to share their twisted thoughts as if to persuade people of their rationality. On the other…

The ability of the American nation to remain secure in the face of both traditional military threats and international terrorism while maintaining the excellence and pace of American science and technology requires a delicate balance. It depends first and foremost on effective dialogue and joint problem solving by those responsible for maintaining…

Today's major problems all share the same outsized modifier: the global economy; global warming; global terror. As the Internet and the marketplace continue to commingle peoples, desires, conflicts, and opportunities, the frenetic pace of change accelerates, dragging in its wake an ever-increasing sense of impending doom. The markets will…

Presents the views of several college faculty members on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Comments touch on academic freedom, personal reactions, and campus response. (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…

This article discusses the vulnerability of U.S. professors of Islamic and Near Eastern studies, particularly if they are of Muslim origin. The author, a scholar of subjects related to literatures and cultures of the Muslim world, who is herself of Muslim origin, has found it more difficult in recent years to bring many topics to the classroom.…

Many employers in the United States have responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by initiating or expanding policies requiring background checks of prospective employees. Their ability to perform such checks has been abetted by the growth of computerized databases and of commercial enterprises that facilitate access to personal…

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…

When history professor Jose Portillo returned to his car parked on the campus of the University of the Basque Country one afternoon in December 1998, he found that it had been set on fire. He immediately suspected that the ETA, the Basque separatist movement, was responsible. "I was a university professor," Portillo explains, "but I…

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…

Once, Baghdad University was one of the most prominent institutions of higher education among all the Arab countries, perhaps second only to Cairo University. In all Iraq, built up about thirteen universities, fifty-five specialized colleges, and more than a hundred scientific centers. Each academic year, more than 250,000 students attended these…

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…