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Scholarship is informed by an openness to new discoveries, an unlimited responsiveness to evidence, and a commitment to the truth. These principles are the foundation of scholarship’s intrinsic challenge to power and the status quo. Balanced against these principles, however, are two worldly circumstances that compromise them: the competition among scholars for dominance in their fields and scholars’ individual political and ethical commitments. How does this tension affect the work academics do? And what is the right relationship between scholarly freedom and the larger struggle for freedom in our dangerous world?

A lecture at the 91ֱ����Ƶ Center for Global Humanities will address these questions and others when Geoffrey Harpham presents “The Liberating Vocation of Scholarship: A Hard Case” on Monday, Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. at the WCHP Lecture Hall in Parker Pavilion on the 91ֱ����ƵPortland Campus.

A former president of the National Humanities Center, Harpham’s long academic career has included positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane University, and Duke University. He has written thirteen books and more than 100 scholarly essays and articles. His most recent books include Scholarship and Freedom (Harvard University Press) and Citizenship on Catfish Row: Race and Nation in American Popular Entertainment (University of South Carolina Press).

In this lecture, Harpham will discuss the challenges scholars face in the context of the battle against apartheid in 1980s South Africa. Along the way, he will reflect on the threats to scholarly freedom facing academics in our present times.

This third lecture of the Fall 2022 season for the Center for Global Humanities will be followed by another in December. Lectures at the Center are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information and to watch the event, please visit: /events/2022/liberating-vocation-scholarship-hard-case