From the archives: Civility, Freedom of Speech & #AcademicFreedom, 2014

…Introducing what may or may not become a regular feature. Call it an experiment to jump start stalled blogging with Diigo's "blog this" feature and publish/distribute Precarity Network collections. This article is just as timely now as when it appeared in 2014 ~ perhaps even more so.

Excerpts and notes on Civility, Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom ~ by Philip A. Pecorino, Ph.D. Queensborough Community College, CUNY, October, 2014

tags: free-speech academic-freedom CUNY civility civil-liberties #PFR

Across the nation the calls for greater “civility” in public discourse have been increasing and along with them there are now the voices of concern over the consequences of such calls and the use of   such exhortations to chill free speech.  In the academy there is concern for academic freedom.

#LaborDay special from the @precariousfac archives: "Salt of the Earth" (1954) + links

Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by MichaelWilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics. (Image: Library of Congress. March 14, 1954 premier at the only theater in the the city that would show it)

The film is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view. Its plot centers on a long and difficult strike, based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. In the film, the company is identified as "Delaware Zinc," and the setting is "Zinctown, New Mexico." The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike. In neorealist style, the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film. The film was called subversive and blacklisted because the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers sponsored it and many blacklisted Hollywood professionals helped produce it.