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Noncoercive Threats to Academic, Political, and Economic Freedom
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Edited by:
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
States and institutions in both conventionally authoritarian and formally democratic societies overtly circumscribe freedom in any number of ways. Yet there are also subtler forms by which authorities and cultural forces compromise the choices of individuals in ways that do not seem, at first glance, to be coercive. This book brings together a distinguished set of scholars to examine covert constraints on academic, political, and economic freedom from a variety of angles, developing surprising and timely new insights.
Ranging across philosophy, economics, law, health, science, art, and the media, luminaries from different fields expose threats to freedom within avowedly liberal and democratic institutions and cultures. Their incisive essays, both analytical and historical, emphasize how economic inequality, academic orthodoxy, media control, racism, and gender roles undermine the potential for human flourishing. By considering such multifarious noncoercive threats, they illuminate the vexed notion of freedom. Lively and learned, this book offers a provocative and urgent understanding of the often-unacknowledged forces that restrict our choices.
Contributors include David Bromwich, Eric Foner, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Ignatieff, Laura Kipnis, Anya Schiffrin, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Geoffrey R. Stone. In an essay and an interview with the volume editors, Noam Chomsky addresses the neoliberal assault on academic freedom.
Ranging across philosophy, economics, law, health, science, art, and the media, luminaries from different fields expose threats to freedom within avowedly liberal and democratic institutions and cultures. Their incisive essays, both analytical and historical, emphasize how economic inequality, academic orthodoxy, media control, racism, and gender roles undermine the potential for human flourishing. By considering such multifarious noncoercive threats, they illuminate the vexed notion of freedom. Lively and learned, this book offers a provocative and urgent understanding of the often-unacknowledged forces that restrict our choices.
Contributors include David Bromwich, Eric Foner, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Ignatieff, Laura Kipnis, Anya Schiffrin, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Geoffrey R. Stone. In an essay and an interview with the volume editors, Noam Chomsky addresses the neoliberal assault on academic freedom.
Reviews
It is easy to suppose that losses of freedom occur because of interference in the life of the loser. Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan Cole have recognized that there are many more subtle (and perhaps equally dangerous) ways in which a person's freedom can be diminished. In a lucid introduction, they survey the problems. What then follows is a compendium of varied perspectives on diverse examples from many domains of human life, given by a stellar cast of writers from different fields. In an age when political life is often dominated by glib rhetoric about freedom, these discussions are urgently needed. This volume is a treasure-chest of illuminating surprises.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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CONTENTS
vii -
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Editors’ Introduction
xi - PART I. PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES
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1. Why Freedom to Say Enlarges Freedom to Think
1 -
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2. Kant and “Can’t”: Practical Necessity and the Diminution of Options
15 -
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3. Freedom and Unfreedom in Human Categories: The Case of Multiplicity
27 - PART II. POLITICAL ECONOMY
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4. Freedom and Coercion, Opportunity and the Economy: Neoliberalism, the Individual, and Society
63 -
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5. Capitalism and the Question of Freedom
106 -
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6. Whither Economic Rights?
119 - PART III. SOCIETY AND LAW
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7. Roe v. Wade: Freedom of the Woman Versus Freedom of the Fetus
155 -
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8. Freedom and Coercion in Public Health
170 -
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9. The Prosecution of Gender Equal Abrahamic Circumcision: Implications for Jews and Muslims
182 - PART IV. RACE
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10. Freedom in the American Century and After
207 -
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11. Freedom Through Unfreedom: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Theory of Democratic Despotism
221 -
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12. The Denial of Freedom and Punitive Excess
235 - PART V. THE ACADEMY
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13. The University in a Time of Crisis
253 -
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14. Persuasion, Manipulation, and Unfreedom
268 -
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15. Ridicule and Argument
279 -
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16. Is Wokeism Changing the Nature of Inquiry?
287 -
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17. A Confederacy of Snitches
301 -
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18. Freedom Gained and Freedom Lost in American Science
314 - PART VI. MEDIA
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19. Evaluating the Fake News Problem at the Scale of the Information Ecosystem
343 -
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20. Measuring the News and Its Impact on Democracy
353 -
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21. Clyde Miller and the Institute for Propaganda Analysis: Fighting Disinformation in the 1930s
365 -
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Notes
383 -
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Contributors
431
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 2, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780231562348
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780231562348
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
