Middle West Review Adopts Statement of Principles To Guide Operations

Vermillion, SD, November 12, 2023 – The academic journal Middle West Review, in response to continuing and various controversies in higher education, has adopted a statement of principles designed to govern its operations and, more generally, to promote a return to basic and common sense research and open inquiry at on American campuses. Middle West Review is based at the University of South Dakota and published by the University of Nebraska Press.  

Statement of Principles 

Middle West Review embraces the principles of open inquiry, free speech, intellectual diversity, and robust debate and discussion and believes they are crucial to the proper functioning of scholarly journals, higher education, and a society where unfettered expression and deliberation are prized ideals. Middle West Review adheres to the longstanding tenet of academic freedom which promotes an open marketplace of ideas among its editors, contributors, and readers. It strives to create a forum that reflects high standards of scholarship and places a premium on facts, logic, and evidence, as well as respecting all viewpoints embracing such standards and that are grounded in the process of critical thinking that has traditionally characterized scholarly endeavors. Middle West Review also welcomes intelligent and well-reasoned creative non-fiction and cultural criticism more generally. Toward these ends, Middle West Review specifically endorses the University of Chicago’s Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression (2015). More broadly, Middle West Review recognizes the importance of creating and sustaining academic and literary outlets in the nation’s far-flung and diverse regions and embraces the goals of regionalists who have sought to resist the dominant centers of cultural production in the nation and to create more platforms in order to foster a diversity of thought and creative enterprises.