Newsletter

January 2015

Comments on Mark Mercer’s “Two ways of thinking about academic freedom”

Mark Ramsay

Mark Mercer holds that an instrumental model
treats academic freedom as a tool for the “discovery of truth, the dissemination
of knowledge, and the care of the university.” In contrast, his intrinsic model
“conceives of the university as a community in which individuals enjoy, or
aspire to enjoy, full intellectual autonomy.” Mercer sees the instrumental
model’s commitment to academic freedom as unduly contingent—because one can
argue that knowledge production might be enhanced by some limits on freedom, the
instrumental view seems open, at least in principle, to extensive administrative
regulation of teaching and research. His intrinsic model, on the other hand,
recommends a community in which all members think and work by their own
intellectual lights. It does not value freedom for the sake of some other good.

Not surprisingly, this contrast is mirrored in
debates about the more general value of freedom of expression. J.S. Mill’s faith
that an unregulated marketplace of ideas provides the most efficient means of
pursuing truth is questioned even by those sympathetic to his political
conclusions about speech. Does absolute free speech for all persons really
provide the most effective means of pursuing the truth? Another approach holds
that free expression makes a crucial intrinsic contribution to the life of each
person—free expression is necessary if we are to live authentic lives. On this
model, we are less inclined to ask empirical questions about the “pay off’ of
free speech, and it is easier to see why (assuming a commitment to human
equality) each person should enjoy the same freedom to express him/herself.

In my view, a problem emerges if we attempt to
extend the intrinsic argument for general free expression to academic freedom.
Even if we achieve a society in which all persons have the opportunity to attend
university, the gold-standard of academic freedom, tenured professorships, will
never be widely available. Academic freedom might support so-called fully
autonomous lives, but only for a select group of persons. Access to these lives
is not determined by lottery; candidates compete for coveted tenure-stream
positions. Moreover, even successful candidates do not avoid the pressures of
external evaluation—they must prove themselves in order to achieve tenure,
promotion, research funding, and professional prestige¹.

I am not denying that professors do (and should)
enjoy a particularly satisfying form of freedom, but I doubt that the intrinsic
model can account for traditional elements of that freedom’s distribution and
regulation.

What seems crucial to academic freedom is that
university administrators should, in comparison to other workplace supervisors,
wield very limited managerial control. They should not be permitted to supervise
our research (certainly not on anything like a daily basis) and their own
assessments of our research (its quality and direction) should have very
limited, if any, weight². Instead, we should be given large spans of
discretionary time to prove ourselves to broader communities of assessment that
are supported by, but independent of, our workplace supervisors. Likewise, these
communities of assessment are supposed to enjoy a powerful role in determining
who is selected for academic positions. But why should this institution of
additional freedom for a few be socially maintained and supported through
taxation? It seems to me that the justification must be instrumental—we must
defend the idea that academic freedom produces and maintains knowledge that
would be lost or under-produced in its absence. The fact that academic life is
intrinsically rewarding for its participants is not enough.

Footnotes

1. Points emphasized by colleagues Ian Wilks and Peter Williams after a presentation by Mark Mercer.
2. I emphasize research because the extension of academic freedom to teaching raises important questions about the rights of students that I cannot address here.

Marc Ramsay is a professor of Philosophy at Acadia University.