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This chapter intends to provide a reflexive discussion of the experience I loosely refer to as the ‘supervisory relationship breakdown’, which led me to withdraw from a Professional Doctorate in the penultimate year of completion. The event left an indelible impact upon me; a reminder of my blackness, the contrast between that and the ivory tower of academia and the emotional toil I endured as each incident unfolded, ultimately leading to my exit and the shattering of my emotional wellbeing. The term ‘supervisory relationship breakdown’ is a superficial reference to a complex entanglement of what I deemed to be dysconscious racism and attempts situated historically to control people of colour through education. I will explore how I as a black woman in academia believe I am perceived through a dysconscious racial lens, a lens shaped by a perception to maintain white privilege. I posit how a misalignment existed between who I am and who I was perceived to be by my doctoral supervisor. The space between this misalignment became filled with inequity, tension and oppression, culminating in the relationship breakdown. I present an ‘implosion’ of the relationship as a metaphor for the embodied affect having to withdraw from the doctorate had on me; it felt as though my ‘self’ – body, mind and spirit – were broken, in a state of collapse which I did not know how I would recover from. I conclude with support and renewed hope, I returned to academia and found an alternative approach for completing my doctorate.

Changes in the freedoms of individual academics and universities have been gathering apace across the western world since World War II (e.g., Altbach, 2001; Karmel, 2003, p. 2). Such changes have compelled the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to alert the world community to the link between freedoms experienced in the university sector and those in wider democratic systems. In 1998, UNESCO held a World Conference on Higher Education with a specific focus on academic freedom and university autonomy. An international charter resulted, detailing mutual rights, obligations and monitoring mechanisms. The International Association of Universities (IAU), the group responsible for convening the UNESCO debate, emphasised that academic freedom and university autonomy were essential to be able to transmit and advance knowledge:For Universities to serve a world society requires that Academic Freedom and University Autonomy form the bedrock to a new Social Contract – a contract to uphold values common to Humanity and to meet the expectations of a world where frontiers are rapidly dissolving. (cited in Ginkel, 2002, p. 347)

The international student population is steadily increasing. However, we know little about what happens to their academic motivation as they transit from their home culture into a new host culture. This gap in knowledge needs to be addressed given that motivation is a key driver of academic success. The aim of this chapter is to examine factors that can influence international students' academic motivation during and after transition. Three broad theoretical frameworks drawn from the acculturation literature – culture learning theory, stress and coping theory, and social identification theory – are proffered to help understand the impact of the transition on student motivation. It seems inevitable that student motivation will generally decline during the early phases of the transition. This may be due to the differences in sociocultural norms between the home and host culture, the variety of stressors that international students face, and the potential impact of stereotyping and discrimination. However, the extent and duration of this decline could be moderated by a variety of personal (e.g., language proficiency, personality, acculturation strategies, reasons for going abroad) and contextual (e.g., cultural distance, social support) factors. Examples of intervention programs that can buffer against motivational decline are given. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

With a focus on Canada, but framed by similar and shared concerns emerging in the United States, this chapter examines the current status of what constitutes and defines academic freedom for academic librarians and the rights and the protections individual, professional academic librarians have with respect to the freedom of speech and expression of their views in speech and writing within and outside of their institutions. It reviews the historical background of academic freedom and librarianship in Canada, academic freedom language in collective agreements, rights legislation in Canada versus the United States as it pertains to academic librarianship, and rights statements supported by Canadian associations in the library field and associations representing members in postsecondary institutions. The implications of academic librarians using the new communication technologies and social media platforms, such as blogs and networking sites, with respect to academic freedom are examined, as well as, an overview of recent attacks on the academic freedom of academic librarians in the United States and Canada. Included in this analysis are the results of a survey of Canadian academic librarians, which examined attitudes about academic freedom, the external and internal factors which have an impact on academic freedom, and the professional use of new communication technologies and social media platforms.

In response to a dearth of research on the experience of non-UK nationals in UK universities, this chapter reports on a qualitative study involving 40 international academics, including lecturers, senior lecturers and professors, who, within the past five years, had moved to the United Kingdom, specifically Scotland, to join a research-intensive university there, offering a rich account of what it means to be an international academic and live in Scotland. The aim of the project was to identify the challenges and opportunities these international academics perceived, as well as the contributions they saw themselves as making to the host institution and society, and to derive from these findings some recommendations to inform internationalisation policies and practices. The authors observe that international staff encounter a variety of challenges and conclude that the economic benefits expected to accrue from recruiting greater numbers of international academics are unlikely to materialize if star researchers become unhappy with the situation they enter into and consider leaving. Moreover, if internationalisation is to include at least an element of interculturality, then it is essential to capitalise more heavily on international academics’ prior cultural and work-related knowledge and intentionally promote intercultural exchanges of practices, values and ideals.

British public administration has endured radical antistate reforms since 1979. This essay outlines the three phases of these administrative reforms, their sources of support, underlying rationales, basic institutional elements as well as their limitations. As a result of profound administrative changes, UK academic administrative sciences have undergone a redefinition and relabelling. Yet, there is still not a distinctive British School of public administration, nor a pronounced shift to Continental European thinking. Indeed, the author concludes, “UK academic public administration is still more that of a North American satellite than a core European State.”

The UK government’s attempt to “prevent” terrorism and extremism in the university sector is rightly seen as an intolerant threat to academic freedom. However, this development has not come from a “right wing” authoritarian impulse, but rather, replicates many of the discussions already taking place in universities about the need to protect “vulnerable” students from offensive and dangerous ideas. Historically, the threat to academic freedom came from outside the university, from pressures exerted from governments, from religious institutions who oversaw a particular institution or from the demands of business. Alternatively it has been seen as something that is a particular problem in non-Western countries that do not have democracy. While some of these problems and pressures remain, there is a more dangerous threat to academic freedom that comes from within universities, a triumvirate of a relativistic academic culture, a new body of identity-based student activists and a therapeutically oriented university management, all three of which have helped to construct universities as safe spaces for the newly conceptualized “vulnerable student.” With reference to the idea of vulnerability, this chapter attempts to chart and explain these modern developments.