New York, NY, and Washington, DC—In an August 29 letter made public recently, the US Department of Education ordered the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to review its offerings or risk losing future funding. The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has signed a joint statement written and issued by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) last week, urging the Department of Education to rethink its actions in this matter and to step away from this significant threat to academic freedom. This statement asserts that “government funding of such programs must be entirely free of viewpoint discrimination” and “it is entirely improper for any external funder, much less the federal government, to intrude on curricular judgments best made by qualified expert faculty.” AUPresses concurs, affirming our core value of intellectual freedom.
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