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New Strategies of Control

Academic Freedom and Research Ethics Boards

Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

This article, detailing the implications of "ethics drift" for critical work in the academy, reports on an ethics challenge to a non-research-based scholarly text. It analyzes how General Research Ethics Boards (GREBs) can threaten academic freedom when they lack a clear definition of "human subject" research, fail to distinguish between empirical research using humans and scholarly engagement of important social/political issues within human contexts, and overstep the limits of their jurisdiction when they agree to arbitrate on scholarship that ought to be resolved through open debated rather than administrative mechanisms. The article emphasizes that in public democratic institutions, those who contribute to decisions and policies, whether through formal process or by informal tacit ideology, are acting not as individuals but as functionaries of the institution and must bear public accountability and its attendant critiques. The article ends with a recommendation for arms-length oversight of the workings of GREBs.

Key Words: academic freedom • Research Ethics Boards • social responsibility in scholarship • academic commodification

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