Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to receive weekly letters rooted in curiosity and connection.
Know someone who will enjoy The Scholarly Letter? Forward it to them.

All previous editions of The Letter are available on our website.

Hi Scholar,

One of our members in Scholar Square shared the following in our community dedicated to research, scholarship, and learning, and we wanted to share it with you: 

It succinctly captures the communal and craft-like spirit that animates why and how we do scholarship. We can hardly “have”— that is, buy or acquire — scholarship for ourselves, as though attaining rights to it as property. Yet this is precisely what is being made possible by modern economic and financial instruments, which increasingly render scholarship a transaction in the market. Is it any surprise, then, that we are also seeing a diminishing appreciation for the qualities of scholarship: the very qualities of knowledge and of the environment in which the scholar operates? 

We will leave that with you to ponder upon.

In today’s Digest, we have: 

Scholar, perhaps recently and more frequently — given the current political climate in many parts of the world — you have thought about the notion of academic freedom. You may have experienced, or even witnessed, a restriction in your ability to exercise that freedom. Or, if not directly, you will certainly have heard of such violations. They may have filled you with anger, frustration, and perhaps even despair. Justifiably so. But we wondered: what if we were to engage with the notion a little more analytically rather than evocatively?