The essays collected in this book honor H. Chandler Davis (1926-2022), a University of Michigan faculty member who became a symbol of principled dissent when suspended and fired in 1954 for refusing to testify about his political affiliations to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Invoking academic freedom and First Amendment protection, Davis was convicted of contempt of Congress. He served six months in prison before moving to Canada, where he established himself as a brilliant mathematician, prolific writer, and ardent and much beloved advocate for justice.

At a time when a new McCarthyism has come roaring back to threaten free inquiry everywhere, the 12 contributors to this book argue against censorship, the suppression of protest, the policed and surveilled campus, the self-silencing of "institutional neutrality," and other enemies of academic freedom. Also included in this volume is posthumously published work by Davis and by his late wife, the historian Natalie Zemon Davis, which reflects on the importance of facing, and not accepting, authoritarian threats. 

Inspired by Chandler Davis’ courage, integrity, and devotion to the struggle against oppression, injustice, and the persecution of speech, these essays offer crucial insights into the importance of defending intellectual independence, institutional autonomy, and the right to free expression.

Contributors: Michael Bérubé, Juan Cole, H. Chandler Davis, Stefan Hanß, Marjorie Heins, Dima Khalidi, Gene Nichol, Henry Reichman, Ellen Schrecker, Joan Scott, Catharine R. Stimpson, Alan Wald, Silke-Maria Weineck, and Natalie Zemon Davis.

An inspiring document of passion and advocacy, In the Spirit of Wetlands reveals the transformative power of restoration.

Inside Tenement Time is the first comprehensive treatment of literary and cultural texts on surveillance in the Caribbean. Covering the long historical arc of the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, Inside Tenement Time uses Jamaica as a case study to examine moments of crisis and particular spaces, especially urban yard enclaves and their environs, in the Caribbean encounter with surveillance. Making the argument that the Caribbean situation reveals flexible hegemonies rather than provinces of exclusive control, the book demonstrates the countervailing force of sussveillance and spiritveillance, Afro-Indigenous variations on surveillance. Sussveillance and spiritveillance are exemplars of vernacular arts and sciences that operate at and within the frangible borders of state power, exposing the unique dynamics of surveillance in the region and marshalling the acts of imagination with which it contends. For example, the Smile Jamaica concert of 1976, headlined by reggae Superstar Bob Marley, and the reputedly US government-backed 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion in West Kingston, both moments that have dramatic, even mythic residue in Caribbean and global memory, are among the real-life events brought into conversation with literary representations of this history.

Holism grows out of the philosophical position that an object or phenomenon is more than the sum of its parts. And yet analysis--a mental process crucial to human comprehension--involves breaking something down into its components, dismantling the whole in order to grasp it piecemeal and relationally. Wading through such quandaries with grace and precision, The Institutions of Meaning guides readers to a deepened appreciation of the entity that ultimately enables human understanding: the mind itself.

This major work from one of France's most innovative philosophers goes against the grain of analytic philosophy in arguing for the view known as anthropological holism. Meaning is not fundamentally a property of mental representations, Vincent Descombes says. Rather, it arises out of thought that is holistic, embedded in social existence, and bound up with the common practices that shape the way we act and talk.

To understand what an individual "believes" or "wants"--to apply psychological words to a person--we must take into account the full historical and institutional context of a person's life. But how can two people share the same thought if they do not share the same system of belief? Descombes solves this problem by developing a logic of relations that explains the ability of humans to analyze structures based on their parts. Integrating insights from anthropology, linguistics, and social theory, The Institutions of Meaning pushes philosophy forward in bold new directions.