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Spark Talk: “The Social Foundations of Academic Freedom, 1960 to 2022” by David John Frank (November 15th, 2024)
					
 Nov 15, 2024 
 10:30AM to 11:30AM

									

				

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	Date/Time

	Date(s) - 15/11/2024
10:30 am - 11:30 am









Description: Using newly available data, Dr. Frank will discuss his research on academic freedom worldwide. Findings confirm the importance of domestic factors: academic freedom is associated positively with democracy and negatively with state religiosity and militarism. They also confirm the importance of global factors. Embeddedness in liberal international institutions is positively associated with academic freedom, whereas embeddedness in illiberal international institutions has the opposite effect. This helps explain why academic freedom has broadly increased over recent decades, and also why it has experienced episodic, including recent, reversals.


Bio: David John Frank is professor and chair of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His work analyzes the global and cultural foundations of human society. Recent publications include “The Social Foundations of Academic Freedom” (with J. C. Lerch and E. Schofer 2024) and “Animals in World Society” (with M. Zapp and M. Marques 2023).


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