Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, discusses the importance of free speech as a foundation for defending human rights and civil liberties. The podcast explores language restrictions in oppressive societies, the social consequences of free speech, misconceptions about free speech absolutism, and the tendency to use Nazi Germany as an example. It also delves into landmark court cases and the historical connection between free speech and religion.

People with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM fields, and all too often, they face isolation and ableism in academia. Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias (Columbia UP, 2023) is a collection of powerful first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions who have faced changes in their careers, including both successes and challenges, because of their health. It gives voice to common experiences that are frequently overlooked or left unspoken. These deeply personal accounts describe not only health challenges but also the joys, sorrows, humor, and wonder of science and scientists.With a breadth of perspectives on being disabled or chronically ill, these stories highlight the intersectionality of minoritized identities with the disability community. Uncharted features essays by contributors who are d/Deaf, blind, neurodivergent, wheelchair users, have experienced traumatic brain injuries, have blood sugar disorders, have rare medical diagnoses, or have received psychiatric diagnoses, among many others. In many cases, the scientific field is not fully accessible to them, and they frankly describe struggling as well as thriving alongside their conditions.Skylar Bayer is a marine ecologist and science communicator. Currently a marine habitat resource specialist in the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional Office, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences for research on the sex lives of scallops and is a producer for the Story Collider.Gabi Serrato Marks is a geochemist turned writer. She received her PhD in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and is now a partner at the scientist-focused PR firm Stellate Communications. Her work has been published in Scientific American and Audubon and on the PBS Eons YouTube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière, co-authors of Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement (Harvard UP, 2023). Cassidy is Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also President of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Vincent is Professor of Information Science at Université de Montréal, where he also serves as Associate Vice-President of Planning and Communications. He is Scientific Director of the Érudit journal platform and Associate Scientific Director of the Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies.We talk about how the science of science is advancing the work done by each and every scientist, by helping them to do work that is fairer, truer, and realer.Vincent Larivière : "Scientists are group leaders, reviewers, editors, administrators — I mean, we are mostly an autonomous community, so there's mostly no one else to blame for inequity in our science practice. The system that we're in is the one that we've created collectively. So, there is a responsibility in all of the actions we do and in all of the different roles that we have to actually make science better and to fight inequality. Because the inequality, as so much work now demonstrates, is bad. It’s bad from the point of view of the individual scientist, but it’s bad too for the science itself — we could do better science by being more inclusive in our science practice." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Academic Life, we dive into the book The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections (Princeton UP, 2023) by Ben Wildavsky, which makes a persuasive case for building career success through broad education, targeted skills, and social capital. People today expect to hold many jobs over the course of their lives, which is why they need a range of essential skills. The Career Arts provides a corrective to the misleading notion that there is a direct trade-off between going to college and acquiring practical job skills. Drawing on evidence-based research, illuminating case studies, and in-depth interviews, Wildavsky shares vital lessons of what he calls the career arts, which include cultivating a mix of broad and targeted skills, taking advantage of employer-funded education benefits, and preparing for the world as it is, not as you wish it could be. He explains why college remains the gold standard of credentials, and presents the most promising supplements and alternatives to college that can help learners combine general and job-specific skills. He shows how building social capital is also critical to success, particularly for disadvantaged students. A guidebook for students, parents, counselors, and educators, The Career Arts reveals why college education and job preparation are not either-or propositions and identifies the blend of education and networking needed to support real-world career aspirations.Our guest is: Ben Wildavsky, who is a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development. He is the award-winning author of The Great Brain Race and coeditor of Reinventing Higher Education, and Measuring Success. He is the host and co-producer of the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the host and producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners to this episode may be interested in: Academic Life episode on making an alternative CV Academic Life episode on finding a job outside academia Academic Life episode on trying internships and new careers at any age Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey--and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 175+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Privacy is not dead: Students care deeply about their privacy and the rights it safeguards. They need a way to articulate their concerns and guidance on how to act within the complexity of our current information ecosystem and culture of surveillance capitalism.Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods, and Cases (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2023) edited by Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, can help you teach privacy literacy, evolve the privacy practices at your institution, and re-center the individuals behind the data and the ethics behind library work. Divided into four sections: What is Privacy Literacy? Protecting Privacy Educating about Privacy Advocating for Privacy Chapters cover topics including privacy literacy frameworks; digital wellness; embedding a privacy review into digital library workflows; using privacy literacy to challenge price discrimination; privacy pedagogy; and promoting privacy literacy and positive digital citizenship through credit-bearing courses, co-curricular partnerships, and faculty development and continuing education initiatives. Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries provides theory-informed, practical ways to incorporate privacy literacy into library instruction and other areas of academic library practice.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we have a BONUS episode of Madison's Notes: the Madison Program's Executive Director Dr. Shilo Brooks sits down with Dr. Carol Swain to talk about her incredible journey from a childhood in poverty to a career as a prominent political and legal scholar, as well as her new book The Adversity of Diversity: How the Supreme Court's Decision to Remove Race from College Admissions Criteria Will Doom Diversity Programs (Be People Books, 2023).Dr. Carol Swain obtained early tenure at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and went on to become a Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University. She was a 2004-5 James Madison Program Visiting Fellow and is a member of the James Madison Society. She has authored or edited 11 books, written numerous opinion pieces in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and been cited three times by the U.S. Supreme Court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.3 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and as well, Kit Nicholls, who is Director of the Cooper Union's Center for Writing and Learning. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is Learning happens where there's meaning.Bill Cope : "At root, what we're talking about in this conversation is some very old values. We wouldn't disagree much with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we wouldn't disagree much with John Dewey, we wouldn't disagree much with Maria Montessori — if you want to take some of the greats of education — Paulo Freire, we wouldn't want to disagree with. So, we're talking about some old values, but the reality is, The values have not been realized. They might be in small spots of time, for some of us, sometimes, in moments of idealism and extremely hard work. But the question is then, Is there an opportunity for us now with these new media, these digital technologies, to build structures of participation. If our keyword is participation — which is, how to build certain kinds of collaborative, participatory environments — then, can the digital help us do that? Or will the technology make things worse?"Some related links: Common Ground Scholar — Learn and work with meaning!  Here I talk to the authors of the book Syllabus And here's a link to Syllabus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Demonstrating how learning theories are applicable to a variety of real-world contexts, The Librarian's Guide to Learning Theory: Practical Applications in Library Settings (ALA Editions, 2023) will help library workers better understand how people learn so that they can improve support for instruction on their campuses and in their communities. In this book, Ann Medaille illustrates how libraries support learning in numerous ways, from makerspaces to book clubs, from media facilities to group study spaces, from special events to book displays. Medaille unchains the field of learning theory from its verbose and dense underpinnings to show how libraries can use its concepts and principles to better serve the needs of their users.Through 14 chapters organized around learning topics, including motivation, self-regulation, collaboration, and inquiry, readers will explore succinct overviews of major learning theories drawn from the fields of psychology, education, philosophy, and anthropology, among others. All of these can support reflection on concrete ways to improve library instruction, spaces, services, resources, and technologies. This accessible handbook includes teaching librarian's tips, reflection questions, and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905–1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despite living in what she called a “sex and race discriminating world.” Against all odds, the brilliant and hardworking Tate earned degrees in international relations from Oxford University in 1935 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1941. She then joined the faculty of Howard University, where she taught for three decades of her long life spanning the tumultuous twentieth century.Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale UP, 2023) revives and critiques Tate’s prolific and prescient body of scholarship, with topics ranging from nuclear arms limitations to race and imperialism in India, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Tate credited her success to other women, Black and white, who helped her realize her dream of becoming a scholar. Her quest for research and adventure took her around the world twice, traveling solo with her cameras.Barbara Savage’s skilled rendering of Tate’s story is built on more than a decade of research. Tate’s life and work challenge provincial approaches to African American and American history, women’s history, the history of education, diplomatic history, and international thought.Omari Averette-Phillips is a History educator based in Southern California. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of John Bond, founder and publishing consultant of Riverwinds Consulting. We talk about the breadth of services and resources now on offer to publishing scientists — while the industry only grows broader and broader.John Bond : "The one thing I would say helps specifically the middle-tier author (who'll, by the way, be most reluctant to try this) is this: Feel really comfortable sharing your early work on a more frequent and a wider basis. Because these authors tend to be quite shy about sharing work until they themselves think that it's absolutely perfect. And if we're really talking about the best quality ideas and the best quality work — well, sharing the concept with close ties early on, and then a draft or an outline with colleagues early on, and then the draft of it completely written, and then the final version — to do, so to speak, your own peer review early on, so that you head off rabbit holes you might be going down or poor expression of your ideas — that is really essential. Therefore, feel very comfortable with developing that network of people, in your institution, but most importantly, outside your institution."Of interest:  John Bond is a Publishing Consultant at Riverwinds Consulting. To connect with on a proiect, see his website PublishingFundamentals.com. He is the author of a book series with Rowman & Littlefield including The LIttle Guide to Getting Your Journal Article Published: Simple Steps to Success. For the podcast, the publisher has offered the promotional code 4F23LG to save 30%. The rest of the series is also available. His YouTube channel contains over 100 short videos on academic publishing. Or connect with him on LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices