Can the Marketplace of Ideas Survive the Branding of Universities?
Alice Dreger, PhD
Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities & Bioethics
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
This talk draws from my new book, Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science (Penguin Press), and explores the problems with university administrators’ increasing obsession with their “brands.” The speaker will argue that this trend threatens not only scholarship and free inquiry, but also democracy, as universities have functioned as incubators for the ideas that have historically driven our democracies forward. The speaker, an historian of medicine and science, will draw from stories she has collected in this Guggenheim-funded book, and will also talk about her own experiences in terms of challenges to academic freedom.