Critical Knowledge Forum: Academic Responsibility, Agency and Evaluation
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How rankings are an even deeper threat to the academy than you thought possible.
Join us as we discuss how to create a more equitable Academy as scholars. What restrictions do we willingly take on ourselves as members of the club that makes up the Academy? And why? Why those restrictions in particular? Most of our scholarly evaluation systems – metrics, rankings, quality measures – fail to meet even the basic methodological standards.
Academic freedom, if it is to mean anything at all, cannot be founded on appeals to the authority of old buildings, but must be built on clearly communicated evidence, supported in turn by clearly communicated, critiqued, and evaluated assessments of the quality of that evidence and how it is institutionalized. Our current systems restrict academic freedoms by limiting the range of choices we can make, defining where we publish, and the narrow means by which is evaluated. Those current systems are directly responsible for the continuing failure to address equity, diversity, and inclusion issues in the academy, and in the continuing failure of the academy to effectively address equity, diversity and inclusion in society.
About the Speaker
Cameron Neylon, PhD
Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University
Professor Neylon is a co-lead on the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative. He is interested in how to make the internet more effective as a tool for scholarship. He writes and speaks regularly on scholarly communication, the design of web based tools for research, and the need for policy and cultural change within and around the research community.
Cameron Neylon is a one-time biomedical scientist who has moved into the humanities via Open Access and Open Data advocacy. His research and broader work focusses on how we can make the institutions that support research sustainable and fit for purpose for the 21st century and how the advent of new communications technology is a help (and in some cases a hindrance) for this.
About the Critical Knowledge Forum: This new lecture series for the Adelphi community aims to highlight how working across sectors, disciplines, and geographies helps us to identify needs and develop solutions to effectively support knowledge production and dissemination. It will explore how we can change the culture of higher education, embrace new opportunities to engage diverse communities in knowledge-making, as well as global knowledge sharing in accessible and expedited ways.
For more information please contact:
Cara Terzulli
Deputy to the Provost
cterzulli@adelphi.edu
Violeta Ilik
Dean, University Libraries
vilik@adelphi.edu