January 2015
Academic freedom
protects researchers so that they might discover the truth and tell it to the
world. It protects teachers so that they might find and use effective ways
of instructing their students. And it protects professors critical of
goings on at their universities so that they might help their universities to
remain sound institutions of higher learning.
The discovery of
truth, the dissemination of knowledge, and the care of the university are the
central elements in what appears currently to be the most widespread
understanding of academic freedom.
According to this
understanding, because we value truth, knowledge, and the university’s mission
to promote both, we should value academic freedom.
For my part, though,
I prefer a different understanding of the nature and value of academic freedom,
one that begins from a particular conception of the nature and value of the
university itself. Although, on this other understanding, academic freedom
continues to protect truth, knowledge, and the care of the university, none of
the three is the root value that academic freedom serves.
The understanding I
favour conceives of the university as a community in which individuals enjoy, or
aspire to enjoy, full intellectual autonomy. They enjoy, or aspire to
enjoy, intellectual autonomy for themselves, but they are also committed to
ensuring that the other members of the community can enjoy it along with them.
The purpose of academic freedom, then, is to promote and maintain a community in
which people enjoy full intellectual autonomy.
We enjoy
intellectual autonomy when we believe what we believe and value what we value
for our own considered reasons. We are less than fully autonomous
intellectually when our reasons for believing and valuing are opaque to us or
are merely the causes of our mental states. The reasons why we believe or
value as we do are merely causes when they consist in the pressures of
punishment or reward. Suppose, for instance, that we believe that species
evolve by means of natural selection. If we believe that they do because
we don’t wish to appear ignorant or stupid, or because we crave acceptance by
our peers, then we believe they do in indifference to whether in fact they do;
we don’t actually care to understand the origin of species; we care, rather, not
to appear ignorant or stupid. To believe something in indifference to its
truth is to lack intellectual autonomy.
Academic freedom
prevents those who think or value differently from us from shutting us up or
denying us resources. Academic freedom, then, functions to limit the
pressures on our believing and valuing minds, save the pressures of evidence and
argument. Since evidence and argument bear on the truth of belief and the
soundness of values, those who value intellectual autonomy are keen to collect
evidence and to follow the arguments. But they wish to allow only evidence
and argument to influence their cognitive and affective minds.
A university, one
might hope, is a place at which people who value intellectual autonomy
congregate so that they may pursue enquiry and study together. They wish
to pursue enquiry and study together first of all because it’s pleasant and
stimulating to enquire into the world alongside others, especially others who
share one’s love of intellectual autonomy. But people congregate in
universities also because they appreciate the benefits of constructive
criticism. They recognize that by expressing one’s thoughts to others, one
comes to understand those thoughts better, both their weaknesses and their
strengths. They desire to believe truly and to value soundly, and see
criticism as useful in attaining what they desire.
A university in
which academic freedom is valued as essential for intellectual autonomy will be
a freer place, certainly, than a university in which academic freedom is valued
solely for its role in discovering truth, disseminating knowledge, and caring
for the university. This is because while academic freedom is essential to
intellectual autonomy, it is merely useful to discovery, dissemination, and
care. Indeed, as many have argued, the interests of discovery,
dissemination, and care can sometimes best be furthered by limiting the freedom
of members of the university community.
Fruitless research,
they note, does not help in the discovery of truth, while error and falsehood
impede the dissemination of knowledge. Bad teaching wastes students’ time
and money. As for the care of the university, when professors say stupid
things or reveal to the world the woes besetting their institutions, they do
more harm than good to their universities.
Those who would
limit the freedom of members of the university community in the interests of
truth, knowledge, and the university think there is a sound principle by which
they can draw limits around freedom without violating it. Academics, they
say, are experts and professionals; the principle is that as experts and
professionals, academics may properly be held accountable to the expert and
professional standards relevant to their endeavours. They propose that the
state of each discipline implies norms that one cannot violate without ceasing
to be an expert in that discipline. A biologist committed to intelligent
design, then, has given up real biology and, thereby, the academic freedom
university biologists enjoy to pursue truth and to disseminate knowledge.
Likewise, a teacher who violates in his classroom what his peers recognize as
best practices should face sanctions if he doesn’t reform his ways. An
engineering professor who says publicly that few women study engineering because
women are not as good as men in math is not speaking as an engineer but as an
unaccredited cognitive psychologist; because she is not speaking about
engineering, she may be directed by her dean to speak only the explanation
approved by the faculty of engineering or keep quiet.
If, though, we value
academic freedom as essential to a university community centred on intellectual
autonomy, we cannot cite expert or professional standards or norms in responding
to the ID biologists, unconventional graders, and offending engineers in our
midst. At a university given to promoting intellectual autonomy, all these types
and more would be enabled by academic freedom to continue as they wish.
Of course, a
university is a sort of business, trading in money, power, and status. It
collects money from students, governments, industry, and alumni, and pays
professors to pursue research and to teach. It rewards students with
degrees and professors with acknowledgements and promotions. How can it do
all that properly when wide academic freedom would remove accountability from
professors? How in a university marked by wide academic freedom is order
and discipline to be maintained?
The answer is:
through open critical discussion. If we keep alive at our institutions
critical discussion of research, teaching, and the university, we will offer our
colleagues all the care and stimulation they need to correct themselves should
they go off track. If intelligent design is nonsense, that it is nonsense
can be made known to the biology professor. If the unorthodox grading
system is flawed, then its flaws can be made known to the professor who uses it.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that attitudes and practices will be changed by
mere discussion, but among people concerned to understand the world and to teach
others to understand the world, there’s reason to believe that often enough they
will. (We should at least be suspicious of the idea that requiring a
professor to act against her better judgement will make her a better professor.)
I’ve compared and
contrasted two accounts of the nature and purpose of academic freedom, and I
declared that I prefer the one according to which academic freedom removes the
pressures that can prevent us from believing and valuing for our own good
reasons. I’ve expressed my contention that in a university organized
around intellectual autonomy, critical discussion rather than oversight and
control will do all that’s needed to be done to ensure good research and
teaching. I’ve said nothing, though, that might answer the question
whether our culture is one in which universities dedicated to fostering
intellectual autonomy might find public support.
Mark Mercer is a professor and chair of
philosophy at Saint Mary’s University and also a member of the
Board of Directors of SAFS.
Help us maintain freedom in teaching, research and scholarship by joining SAFS or making a donation.
