The Tower under Siege: Technology, Power, and Education ed. by Brian Lewis, Christine Massey, Richard Smith (review)

314 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 freedom. The etymology and institutional history of >academic freedom= can provide clues to its possibilities and liabilities. For Dawne McCance, the spatialization of academic freedom as something >within= the university depends on a separation which was already destabilized in the writings of Kant. If academic freedom and (real or imagined) university structures and practices are so thoroughly intricated, what will be the fate of academic freedom B and this is the question posed by Jerry Zaslove B in a deautonomized or even de-institutionalized university? While the relationship between academic freedom and institutional autonomy has been receiving important reinforcement in the work of influential United States educational theorist Donald Kennedy, editor Len Findlay argues that our sense of >academic freedom= will be very different if we try to realize a >distinctively Canadian commitment though publicly funded institutions to the public interest in which all of us have a stake and an opportunity to contribute.= The essay on >Decolonising the University= by Mikmaw Nation scholar Marie Battiste is in the first instance a reminder of how effective >academic freedom= has been used as a justification for exploitative and expropriative research >on= indigenous peoples, and makes a case for development of new and non-Eurocentric ethical research guidelines. But it also provides a place for an overview of the entire collection and the four books considered here. Academics today are driven to the strategic support of classroom authority, scholarly independence, professional self-regulation, and an individualized conception of intellectual property. The degree to which we can deeply review, revise, and perhaps overturn these engrained and culturally specific conceptions may be the most stringent test of the >academic freedom= whose merits we also defend. (HEATHER MURRAY) Brian Lewis, Christine Massey, and Richard Smith, editors. The Tower under Siege: Technology, Power, and Education McGill-Queen=s University Press xiv, 178. $65.00, $24.95 Almost seventy years ago, the historian and philosopher Arthur O. Lovejoy, first secretary of the American Association of University Professors, contributed an article on academic freedom (a term conspicuously absent from the book under review here) to the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Those who buy the services of professors, he wrote, >may not prescribe the nature of the service to be rendered.= Why is this so? >There are certain professional functions generally recognized to be indispensable in the life of a civilized community which cannot be performed if the specific manner of their performance is dictated by those who pay for them, and ... the profession of the scholar and teacher in institutions in higher learning is one of these.= humanities 315 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Lovejoy=s words came repeatedly to mind as I read this volume. The work of two faculty members of the School of Communications at Simon Fraser University and a doctoral student in the school (two chapters are written by others, identified by name but not affiliation), it points to a future in which the student as consumer is central. And what that student seems increasingly to want, especially if he or she is not in the eighteen to twentytwo age group, is telelearning, distance learning using new, computerbased technologies. The book is a useful though uneven first attempt to discuss the challenges facing Canadian post-secondary institutions in the age of the internet, to show what the interest and involvement of the federal and provincial governments have been, and to sketch what the institutions have been doing to respond to new technological challenges, government demands, and market pressures. There seems to be significant >market demand= that certain courses be offered on the net. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, governments are pressing colleges and universities to meet that demand, especially where it is believed to promote student employability while reducing instructional costs. Led by the for-profit University of Phoenix, corporations are beginning to exploit the potentially profitable areas of higher education, i.e., those that are strongly vocational in orientation. The authors fear that Canadian universities are failing to meet the new demands and pressures, and, indeed, that many institutions are...