Skip to main content

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN CENSORED BY THE SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES & SCHOOLS

Geoffrey Alderman issues this statement in a purely personal capacity.


"Last year I accepted an invitation from the Southern Assocoiation of Colleges & Schools (SACS), based in Georgia, USA, to make a presentation to its annual meeting in Atlanta in December 2005.


The presentation involved, inter alia, a critique of the SACS' university and college accreditation methodology.

In January 2006 I was pleased to receive from SACS details of the very positive feedback on that presentation. I was invited to propose a subject for a presentation at the forthcoming SACS annual meeting, which will take place in Orlando, Florida, next December.

Meanwhile, the "Chronicle of Higher Education ran a long article (13 January 2006) on American InterContinental University (AIU). This article triggered a lively debate on the Chronicle's "Forum" website, in which my colleague Dr Grace Telesco (South Florida Campus) and I (London Campus) took part, in defence of the university. Again, I was openly critical of the SACS' accreditation methodology.

I was shocked to receive, subsequent to this debate, an email from SACS withdrawing the invitation to me to propose a presentation for delivery at Orlando. The reason given was that my institution - AIU - had been placed on sanction, which is true. When I queried this 'disinivitation,' and asked to be directed to the relevant SACS policy on this subject, I was referred to the President of SACS, Dr Belle Wheelan.

In an email to me earlier this month Dr Wheelan admitted that there was no SACS policy prohibiting me from making a presentation. But Dr Wheelan added that "as a matter of good PRACTICE, we have not historically accepted proposals from representatives of institutions that are on sanction. It keeps folks from asking, "if that is such a good practice, why is that institution on sanction?" " [To which of course the answer might be: It is SACS that is wrong, not the institution - GA]

I regard this as a quite disingenuous attempt to (a) prevent me making a presentation at Orlando and to (b) cast doubt on the legitimacy of anything I may have said or may say in the foreseeable future critical of SACS.

It is of course also an attack on my academic freedom. I have been prevented not merely from making a presentation at Orlando, but even from proposing a subject for presentation.

I have therefore placed the matter in the hands of the American Association of University Professors, of which I am a member."

STATEMENT ENDS.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  A  MILLER'S TALE On Friday 1 st October the University of Bristol issued a statement [1] in relation to Dr David Miller, who until that date (and from 2018) had been Professor of Sociology at that University. The statement told us that Professor Miller was no longer employed by the University, and it explained, in very general terms, why:   We have a duty of care to all students and the wider University community, in addition to a need to apply our own codes of conduct consistently and with integrity. Balancing those important considerations, and after careful deliberation, a disciplinary hearing found Professor Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff and the University has concluded that Professor Miller’s employment should be terminated with immediate effect.   The background - or at least some background – to this decision to dismiss Professor Miller is I think well known. As I noted in the Jewish News last March [2] , for some cons
2 comments
Read more

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: BEATING HEART OR BLEEDING HEART?

In recent weeks I’ve given interviews to British, Israeli and even German newspapers on the subject of the fate of the Jewish Chronicle. Naturally I have been careful to declare a number of interests. It was for the Jewish Chronicle that from 2002 until 2016 I wrote the paper’s weekly anchor comment column. I never missed a deadline. Besides filing these columns I wrote others for the paper, including book reviews and obituaries. Then I should add that as part of my academic research I have actually read every edition of the JC, from its very first in 1841. I still resort to its invaluable online searchable archive to check this fact or that. In common with many other newspapers the JC has been struggling financially in recent years. In 2018 it posted a loss of around £1.5 million. Its immediate future appeared to have been secured by donations from (as the Financial Times unhelpfully put it) “unnamed individuals,” but evidently this was not enough to sav
1 comment
Read more