Brendan Gillon and Ian Henderson28 October 2012 Issue No:245
No statement on academic freedom should be a 'laundry list' of what one
is permitted to do, but rather a statement of principle whereby one can
distinguish between which activities academic freedom sanctions and
which it does not.
One way to address the question of what academic freedom is, is to begin with an idealisation, in light of which one addresses successive complications going from idealisation to actual application.
We shall ask three questions. What is academic freedom for an idealised community of scholars? How is academic freedom to be preserved once the community of scholars is housed, as it were, in the institution of a university? And how is academic freedom preserved, once the university is situated within the society that supports it?
We take a community of scholars to be a community of thinkers engaged in the search for truth and understanding and in the dissemination of the results of the search. We take it that these thinkers are pursuing the search regardless of where it may lead them.
This means that they pursue their search without constraint of any orthodoxy – popular, political or disciplinary – and independently of any pecuniary benefit that might accrue to the search. The freedom required to undertake such a pursuit is the freedom of scholarship. The freedom of scholarship includes the freedom to disseminate one's research.
Dissemination does not require teaching. Of course, teaching can be brought within the purview of the dissemination of results, but in practice teaching comprises more than mere dissemination, it includes imparting the skills where one conducts research. It is not unreasonable, then, to see a community of scholars engaged in teaching of its scholarship.
Thus scholars, as teachers, enjoy the freedom to teach (lehrfreiheit). Those who come to the scholarly community to study – students – thereby acquire the freedom to study subjects that concern them and to form conclusions for themselves and to express their opinions. In other words, such students enjoy the freedom to learn (lernfreiheit).
Academic freedom includes, but is not limited to, the freedom of scholars to engage in scholarship, the freedom of teachers to teach and the freedom of students to learn.
A university is the publicly recognisable institutional form of such a scholarly community and it exists to serve its community. Because the institution serves the scholarly community, the institution has the obligation to protect the freedom of its scholars to do research and to teach and the freedom of its students to learn.
The institution does not, however, enjoy any prerogatives with regard to the scholarly and pedagogical directions of the scholarly community. Such prerogatives belong to the community.
The university is also an institution within a society. In modern societies, the livelihoods of individuals are cast in terms of employment relations. So it is with the members of scholarly communities housed within universities; they are employees of the university. As such, they have certain obligations to their employer that they must discharge.
How to harmonise the freedom scholars have by dint of being members of a scholarly community and the obligations they incur by dint of being employees of the university is a complex matter.
In addition, universities depend on the societies that house them for the funds to operate them. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that the society that houses a university receives something in return from the university.
The concern is that the uses to which society wishes to put universities risk subverting their very purpose – namely, to house a community of scholars, teachers and students enjoying academic freedom. This risk is especially acute when powerful institutions within society, such as governments, corporations and professional bodies, seek to reorient the university towards their own ends.
Universities have traditionally provided services to the societies in which they reside. The earliest universities were centred on the training of doctors, lawyers and theologians. Today, they train accountants, agronomists, dentists, engineers, musicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and teachers. The corresponding professional associations and accreditation bodies seek to impose requirements on the professional curricula of universities, thereby curtailing the freedom of members of scholarly communities to teach and the freedom to learn.
In addition, in a jurisdiction such as the province of Quebec, the government issues directives to professional programmes specifying which areas are to be expanded and which contracted, impinging not only directly on the freedom to learn and to teach but also indirectly on the freedom to do research.
Since the industrial revolution, and at a terrifically accelerated pace since World War II, governments have come to see universities as the incubators of technological innovation, which governments view as a prime mover of economic development and prosperity.
Governments, by funding certain areas of research in universities but not others, reshape, curtail or even eliminate areas of research. Corporations can have a similar impact.
The institutional autonomy of the university is the independence required to ensure that the demands societies place on universities are not acceded to, to the point where only a ghost of academic freedom remains for the communities of scholars universities house.
Any society that supports a community of scholars and teachers has every right to expect something in return from the community, but as the demands grow, the degree of freedom diminishes.
We risk, in the end, having very powerful universities in which the degree of freedom has been reduced to zero.
As with so many other things, a balance has to be struck between the demands placed by society on scholars and teachers, on the one hand, and the freedom that follows from the raison d'être of a community of scholars and teachers, on the other.
* Brendan Gillon and Ian Henderson are members of the academic freedom committee of the McGill Association of University Teachers, and presented at the Conference on Academic Freedom organised by the office of the provost at McGill University and held on 28 September 2012. The committee was set up to look into the fact that McGill does not have a statement of academic freedom.
One way to address the question of what academic freedom is, is to begin with an idealisation, in light of which one addresses successive complications going from idealisation to actual application.
We shall ask three questions. What is academic freedom for an idealised community of scholars? How is academic freedom to be preserved once the community of scholars is housed, as it were, in the institution of a university? And how is academic freedom preserved, once the university is situated within the society that supports it?
We take a community of scholars to be a community of thinkers engaged in the search for truth and understanding and in the dissemination of the results of the search. We take it that these thinkers are pursuing the search regardless of where it may lead them.
This means that they pursue their search without constraint of any orthodoxy – popular, political or disciplinary – and independently of any pecuniary benefit that might accrue to the search. The freedom required to undertake such a pursuit is the freedom of scholarship. The freedom of scholarship includes the freedom to disseminate one's research.
Dissemination does not require teaching. Of course, teaching can be brought within the purview of the dissemination of results, but in practice teaching comprises more than mere dissemination, it includes imparting the skills where one conducts research. It is not unreasonable, then, to see a community of scholars engaged in teaching of its scholarship.
Thus scholars, as teachers, enjoy the freedom to teach (lehrfreiheit). Those who come to the scholarly community to study – students – thereby acquire the freedom to study subjects that concern them and to form conclusions for themselves and to express their opinions. In other words, such students enjoy the freedom to learn (lernfreiheit).
Academic freedom includes, but is not limited to, the freedom of scholars to engage in scholarship, the freedom of teachers to teach and the freedom of students to learn.
A university is the publicly recognisable institutional form of such a scholarly community and it exists to serve its community. Because the institution serves the scholarly community, the institution has the obligation to protect the freedom of its scholars to do research and to teach and the freedom of its students to learn.
The institution does not, however, enjoy any prerogatives with regard to the scholarly and pedagogical directions of the scholarly community. Such prerogatives belong to the community.
The university is also an institution within a society. In modern societies, the livelihoods of individuals are cast in terms of employment relations. So it is with the members of scholarly communities housed within universities; they are employees of the university. As such, they have certain obligations to their employer that they must discharge.
How to harmonise the freedom scholars have by dint of being members of a scholarly community and the obligations they incur by dint of being employees of the university is a complex matter.
In addition, universities depend on the societies that house them for the funds to operate them. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that the society that houses a university receives something in return from the university.
The concern is that the uses to which society wishes to put universities risk subverting their very purpose – namely, to house a community of scholars, teachers and students enjoying academic freedom. This risk is especially acute when powerful institutions within society, such as governments, corporations and professional bodies, seek to reorient the university towards their own ends.
Universities have traditionally provided services to the societies in which they reside. The earliest universities were centred on the training of doctors, lawyers and theologians. Today, they train accountants, agronomists, dentists, engineers, musicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and teachers. The corresponding professional associations and accreditation bodies seek to impose requirements on the professional curricula of universities, thereby curtailing the freedom of members of scholarly communities to teach and the freedom to learn.
In addition, in a jurisdiction such as the province of Quebec, the government issues directives to professional programmes specifying which areas are to be expanded and which contracted, impinging not only directly on the freedom to learn and to teach but also indirectly on the freedom to do research.
Since the industrial revolution, and at a terrifically accelerated pace since World War II, governments have come to see universities as the incubators of technological innovation, which governments view as a prime mover of economic development and prosperity.
Governments, by funding certain areas of research in universities but not others, reshape, curtail or even eliminate areas of research. Corporations can have a similar impact.
The institutional autonomy of the university is the independence required to ensure that the demands societies place on universities are not acceded to, to the point where only a ghost of academic freedom remains for the communities of scholars universities house.
Any society that supports a community of scholars and teachers has every right to expect something in return from the community, but as the demands grow, the degree of freedom diminishes.
We risk, in the end, having very powerful universities in which the degree of freedom has been reduced to zero.
As with so many other things, a balance has to be struck between the demands placed by society on scholars and teachers, on the one hand, and the freedom that follows from the raison d'être of a community of scholars and teachers, on the other.
* Brendan Gillon and Ian Henderson are members of the academic freedom committee of the McGill Association of University Teachers, and presented at the Conference on Academic Freedom organised by the office of the provost at McGill University and held on 28 September 2012. The committee was set up to look into the fact that McGill does not have a statement of academic freedom.
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