NSU’s American Association of University Women branch will present a discussion on threats to academic freedom on April 26.
Randi Sims, professor of management and president of NSU’s AAUW branch, believes it will be an important discussion for students.
“Women and minorities have more rights, rights that they didn’t used to have, through academic freedom, people researching and studying disparity, studying women’s history, studying Black history, studying women’s literature or all kinds of different topics,” Sims said. “If it wasn’t for the fact that individuals could study and research the areas they wanted to, we would not have so much social progress.”
AAUW, which was founded in 1881, promotes gender equality through education, advocacy and research. Sims first became a member of AAUW in 1993, and later joined NSU’s branch. Since then, Sims worked closely to ensure that AAUW protects students and academic freedom. “I learned actually about the branch we had on campus in the student newspaper, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years ago,” said Sims. “Our branch here at NSU, we mostly focus on the education part. We also have a student club on campus that’s funded by the student government.
The university pays to be a partner with AAUW, so all students, graduate [and] undergraduate, can join the American Association of University Women for free.”
The discussion on April 26 about academic freedom will be led by Jon Garon, director of Intellectual Property and former dean in the Shepard Broad College of Law.
Sims said that Garon was the first person who agreed to speak at the discussion.
“I’ve been at the university a really long time, and I know a lot of people from a lot of other centers, and the people that I know who could speak on this topic were actually afraid to speak on this topic.
They were afraid that they would be somehow punished for speaking out for academic freedom. Isn’t that a sad state of affairs?” Sims said. “I got to Professor Garon in the law school. He’s not afraid.”
The event will start at 12:25 p.m. in the atrium in the Carl DeSantis building. Students can RSVP by emailing Sims at sims@nova.edu.
“We’re just so excited to have this event. We hope we have a really good turnout. We have seating for 100. We’ll have lunch,” Sims said. “We hope the students come because they’re studying their choice of major, the fact that majors can even exist, right? That’s all part of academic freedom.”
Be the first to comment on "The AAUW promotes academic freedom"