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British Journal of Educational Studies

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ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE DIMINISHED SUBJECT

Dennis Hayesa a Canterbury Christ Church University/Academics For Academic Freedom, Online publication date: 05 July 2010

To cite this Article Hayes, Dennis(2009) 'ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE DIMINISHED SUBJECT', British Journal of

Educational Studies, 57: 2, 127 145 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00432.x URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00432.x

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British Journal of Educational Studies, ISSN 0007-1005 DOI number: 10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00432.x Vol. 57, No. 2, June 2009, pp 127145

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE DIMINISHED SUBJECT

ACADEMIC ARTICLE AND THE DIMINISHED SUBJECT ORIGINAL Publishing Ltd. and SES 2009 XXX Blackwell 1467-8527 0007-1005 British BJES Journal of Educational Studies Oxford, UK FREEDOM Blackwell Publishing Ltd

by Dennis Hayes,Canterbury Christ Church University/Academics For Academic Freedom

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ABSTRACT: Discussions about freedom of speech and academic freedom today are about the limits to those freedoms. However, these discussions take place mostly in the higher education trade press and do not receive any serious attention from academics and educationalists. In this paper several key arguments for limiting academic freedom are identied, examined and placed in an historical context. That contextualisation shows that with the disappearance of social and political struggles to extend freedom in society there has come a narrowing of academic life and a new and impoverished concept of academic freedom for a diminished idea of the human subject, of humanity and of human potential. Keywords: free speech, academic freedom, diminished subject 1. Introduction Debates about academic freedom and free speech in universities, the press, and wider society are now almost all about the limits to these freedoms. When Bill Rammell, then Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, began a debate about academic freedom in British universities with a paper to the Fabian Society in 2007, he said with condence: There are already, and always have been, limits to academic freedom (Rammell, 2007). Likewise, an exhibition at the British Library on Taking Liberties has a section on Free Speech and its limits (British Library, 2008 09). The Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, is fond of noting that there are limits to free speech, adding casual qualications to politicians and the press when she is defending free speech, such as: There are some limits on free speech, I agree (Hansard, 2005) and All democracies place necessary and proportionate limits on free speech (Traynor et al., 2006). There are many more examples.
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No defence of unqualied free speech, therefore, comes from where you might, however naively, most expect it. Statements made by Vice-Chancellors, academics, politicians and higher education unions and advisory bodies all celebrate academic freedom and free speech, with the caveat But .... Then follows their favourite examples of what is unacceptable, such as the views of the British National Party (BNP) or the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). However, the most popular but is the vague moralistic claim that academic freedom comes with responsibilities (see Hayes, 2008 and below). The National Union of Students in the UK supports what it calls a No Platform policy for certain racist fascist or violent groups. There are ill-dened epithets that label clearly identiable groups such as the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir (see Hayes and Reynolds, 2008). Legislation, speech codes, equality language guidelines and university policies on staff and student safety enshrine limits to what can be said in order not to cause physical or mental distress (see Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008). Occasionally there are high prole academic freedom cases where members of staff, or students, get into serious trouble for expressing their views and many lose or leave their jobs; Laurence Summers (Harvard), Frank Ellis (Leeds), Sal Fiore (Wolverhampton), Gary McLennan and John Hookham (Queensland University of Technology) and Hicham Yezza (Nottingham) are just a few examples of individuals who, in order, fell foul of feminist outrage, anti-racist staff and student campaigners, postmodernism, management attitudes, and government-promoted hysteria. Such are the day to day attacks on academic freedom that are reported at least in pages of the trade press, in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Times Higher Education supplement. Academics with the slightest interest in the politics of higher education will be aware of them. The question this introductory set of thoughts raises is whether this apparently restrictive and censorious climate indicates that anything has changed about how academics, policy makers and the media conceive of academic freedom. Or is it merely an example of constant and continual conict on the fringes of academia about the limits to that freedom? The relative disinterest of academics, particularly those now designated as professors of higher education, in writing and researching about academic freedom would suggest that such conicts are seen as marginal conicts about where to set necessary limits. There are no high prole defenders of absolute free speech and academic freedom amongst those paid to think about higher education.
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When academics address the issue they tend to conclude that academic freedom is more complicated than it appears to be. David Palfreyman, of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (OxCHEPS), in his careful, if formal and legalistic, discussion of the putative threats to academic freedom begins with this remark: Academic freedom can be a difcult concept to dene in theory, and one sometimes abused in practice when inappropriately invoked by academics/faculty in employment law disputes with their university (and occasionally by students in the context of campus free speech). (Palfreyman, 2006/2007, p. 1) James Arthur calls academic freedom a contested concept that needs to be argued for because it is differently understood (Arthur, 2006, p. 113). Louis Menand, introducing an inuential collection of essays on academic freedom with a paper on The Limits to Academic Freedom argues that:
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The concept of academic freedom ... has always been problematic. It is inherently problematic. Like any ideal concept, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief in order properly and efciently to do its work. (Menand, 1996, p. 6) Academic freedom is difcult, contested and problematic according to its academic defenders, many of whom want to see the idea as in need of further complication, or of a new conceptualisation (Dworkin, 1996; Rorty, 1996). Rarely do they think that it is a pretty useless concept (for an exception see Fish, 2008). While academic specialists in higher education ignore the topic of academic freedom, and those who are interested see the issue as in some sense or other complicated, the interesting debates are conducted at a popular and polemical level. Leaving aside the semantic point that polemical in its current disparaging usage by academics means says something interesting and original, it is important that there is some clarity of thought about the polemics in these debates to take the discussion further. 2. Contemporary Arguments about Academic Freedom There are ve current attitudes to academic freedom that can be drawn out of the popular debates about the limits to academic freedom. They are to be found in various forms in these debates and, as the discussion of them will show, they are not mutually exclusive.
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First: Academic Freedom is not Under Threat and there are Proper Limits to it If academic freedom is thought of as merely the freedom to undertake research as individual academics, most do not see it as in any substantial way as being under threat. The limits to it are merely modern variations of previous and proper limits. The problems that are addressed in the press are a result of academics transgressing their true academic authority based on evidence from their research. They comment on matters in other disciplines or on actions and decisions by management, or engage in politics, or express opinions that are eccentric and extreme. It is a result of this transgression of their proper role that they become the subject of sensational and exaggerated journalism. The proper limit to academic freedom is academic authority based on research. It is tempting to blame this narrowness, at least in the UK, on the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which has made a focus on research a requirement of funding and career success; but most academics throughout the ages were narrow scholars in this way. Even opponents of the RAE and similar assessments accept the argument that academic freedom is about freedom to research and this gives academics authority to speak where no others have that authority neither university management, the state, politicians or the populace. This is a powerful position and seems to provide a foundation for the professional privilege of academic freedom. It is inadequate for three reasons. The rst, and most important, is that stimulating and creative work in universities often comes from inter-disciplinary interest, from the transgression of boundaries. The dullness of much academic research may be an expression of the disappearance of this inter-disciplinary interest. This narrow attitude undermines not only the possibility of exciting academic debate in universities but academic research itself. Second, it ignores the inuence of research funding bodies, government particularly in subjects such as education and teacher training in which politicians take a particular interest and quality assurance bodies in determining the focus of research. University management can have a very important role here and not just through forming ethics committees to oversee research. They are often directly political. Take, for example, their unthinking and uncritical celebration of political agendas, including using Every Child Matters as a framework for all educational research, the promotion of personal well-being in health and education and
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environmental sustainability through the institution. Not recognising these as political initiatives is a result of research parochialism as it would be exposed in wider debate. Third, is that this argument is a reection of the fact that academics are sanguine about academic freedom because they engage in self-censorship. They avoid contentious issues and generally are compliant not only in search of funding streams but as a result of not being exposed to the potential stimulus of academics from other disciplines and being compliant in the face of government agendas. Self-censorship is obviously difcult to evidence, but the lack of willingness of academics to engage in debate, which is a feature of research conferences, does indicate an unwillingness to put ideas to the test of more than the one or two questions we have time for. More time for questions would mean more time for self-censorship, bias and conscious or unconscious blindness to alternative viewpoints to be exposed. This, of course, is to blame academics for being their own enemy within. Philosopher and writer Alan Ryan is critical of the damaging suggestion [...] that freedom of speech and inquiry is under attack from students and their teachers (Ryan, 1999, p. 142); but a narrow research focus, compliance and self-censorship are a feature of this attack. In this climate, partly created by the New Labour government he represented, Bill Rammells instrumentalist defence of academic freedom in order to combat extremism in universities through rational debate was unlikely to have any impact. Not because it sets an instrumentalist goal for academic freedom and therefore makes it unfree, but because the narrow concept of academic freedom as applying only to research is so widely held that the majority of academics will be uninterested in his defence. Those that were interested in what he said, being partisan defenders of an instrumentalist approach to academic freedom in the interest of various radical causes themselves, saw his defence of academic freedom as a veiled attack on minority, Muslin communities. Whether this rst argument reects an ostrich-like, indifferent, or sanguine attitude to academic freedom, it is a tragedy for the tradition and the ideal of the academy as a place of open debate and scholarship in pursuit of knowledge. As debate in civic society and social engagement in general has declined, so the university has experienced a similar decline. The consequences and the profundity of that decline in the academy are seldom noticed. The academy is not a geographical location for technical researchers but the societal embodiment of the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge.
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Second: Academic Freedom must be Restricted to Counter the Increased Threat from Fascist and Racist Groups and Individuals This is not only the basis of the No Platform policies of the National Union of Students in the UK the idea that racist and extreme views need to be suppressed permeates into most university equality policies. It is obviously based on a fantastic distortion of the inuence of such groups and even of their current character. There is no real threat of the sort the proponents of this put forward, for example one activist often hearing the sound of jackboots marching down the campus corridors. This sort of talk is self-delusion. Whatever the reality, the No Platform position does major damage to academic freedom and free speech. It is highly symbolic in that it is a marker to millions of students and the academy in general that there are certain views that must not be heard. It transforms the idea of open debate in the university into a platform for the exposition of views. This in turn, assumes there is no reasoning about what is heard on the platform but that it affects individuals in a mechanical or causal way. This is why the absurd claim is made that racial attacks increase in an area whenever a BNP speaker is given a platform. This is a false generalisation, but even if it is true in certain instances it is mere correlation and no causal link between racist speech and racist action is established. The idea of speech as merely having a causal effect on an audience is to treat them as less than human. This comes out in two assumptions. The rst is that some students will be gullible and so weak minded they will be persuaded by the racist rhetoric. Incidentally, this appears to be an assumption made about the whole of the working class who need to be protected from the utterances of such groups for the same reason! The second is that some students, particularly those from ethnic minorities, might be so hurt by what they hear that they need to be protected from it. Part of being educated used to mean you could hear any arguments and learn to answer them. Is there not a whiff of class prejudice and racism in these arguments? Are the working class and ethnic minorities incapable of reasoning and need to be protected by middle-class student activists? In the early 1990s Nat Hentoff gave the example of a more positive response, in a debate at Harvard, to a call from a white student in favour of speech codes. He believed black students might be driven away from university and not receive any education if racist speech was not punished: A black student rose and said that the white student had a hell of a nerve to assume that he in the face of racist speech would
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pack up his books and go home. Hes been familiar with that kind of speech all his life, and he had never felt the need to run away from it. Hed handled it before and he could again. The black student then looked at his white colleague and said that it was condescending to say that blacks have to be protected from racist speech. It is more racist and insulting, he emphasised, to say that than to call me a nigger. (Hentoff, 1991, p. 83) It was a minority view then and almost non-existent now. It is non-existent because the idea of a resilient student, such as Hentoffs black law student, has been entirely replaced by a more vulnerable picture of ethnic minorities and other groups. There are some hopeful signs that British students are starting to reject this condescending and insulting view of their ability to make up their own minds by opposing No Platform policies (Hayes and Reynolds, 2008). However, No Platform policies, although ineffective and irrelevant as the groups they protect students from, remain a beacon for restrictions on academic freedom. University authorities, students and some radical academics are all too happy to use modied forms of No Platform to remove or silence academics they consider racist. The arguments are often that they are not experts in the eld and have no right to speak using the rst argument and dening academic freedom as being based on research. The duplicitous nature of this argument was exposed when there was a campaign to sack Oxford academic David Coleman for his association with Migration Watch UK. Unfortunately for the protesters this was his area of research expertise, being as he was a professor of demography, but they did not seem to care. Third: Academic Freedom is being Curtailed by Commercial Pressures that are leading to the Marketisation and Privatisation of the Academy The most common cry from radical academics and higher education trade unionists is about the marketisation of the university and the commodication of knowledge. It is hard to understand these oft repeated phrases. Vague talk about the market in which knowledge is sold means little. For knowledge, or even a university course, to become a commodity it would have to be purchased and its value determined in a free market. There is no such market, so we are in the realm of metaphor. There is management speak, there are mission statements and the like, and increasingly private funding of university activities often through knowledge transfer. Some
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object to the funding of military research projects or to a variety of companies undertaking research that may lead to commercial products. Others are happy to receive funding, with or without strings. Whatever people object to about business involvement the evidence against such funding has to be more than ad hominem and address not whether the company is moral, or green, but whether the funding in some way causes bias in the research process and outcomes. Arguments about the involvement of private companies affecting academic freedom seem peculiarly state-blind. While the government interferes in all aspects of university life, reducing programmes to skills based training regimes and research to economically or socially useful research, academics look away. The argument about the threat to academic freedom from he who pays the piper does not seem to be addressed to the real paymaster of the university sector. It does seem to be a common assumption that those providing private funding will seek certain outcomes. However, this is not a necessary feature of any funding, public or private. What is more common with either funding is the suppression or toning down of unacceptable research results. The obsession with private funding seems to be driven by anti-capitalist ideology or anxiety about working conditions and pay more than any real threat to academic freedom. But why should private funding make life more difcult for academics? The assumption is that the market will not support them in the same way and they will be more vulnerable than when funded by the state. This fearful consciousness is more likely to undermine resistance to change than a robust acceptance and may become a self-fullling prophesy. Many university departments survive on private funding, yet their academic freedom and condence is unaffected. The jury is out here and there needs to be a real debate about private funding and academic freedom. Fourth: Academic Freedom is under Threat in order to meet the Challenges posed post 9/11 A recent spate of books on academic freedom after 9/11 show a rising concern with explicit government censorship and the use of universities as weapons in the war against terror (Doumani, 2006; Gerstmann and Streb, 2008; ONeil, 2008). They are often intellectual ragbags of books adding corporate power, terrorism, the wired world and other popular themes to their contents. But at least they are raising the issue of academic freedom in a way not seen for twenty years (see below). The situation post 9/11 appears to be new. Concerns about the curtailment of free speech and academic
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freedom are a feature of wartime. But in a situation of a supposedly permanent war against terror arguments about wartime censorship can no longer be defended by reference to short-term necessity. The discussions that come out of this new situation are both positive and negative. In an attempt to identify Western values, free speech and academic freedom are obvious candidates. Paradoxically it seems that universities and colleges, and now even schools, are seen to be places were extremists can gain a platform and brainwash susceptible students into joining extremist groups. Bill Rammells paper expresses this paradox particularly well. He does not support No Platform, recognising the contradictory nature of allowing free speech and academic freedom for Muslim views, however extreme, and not allowing this freedom for legal groups labelled fascist and racist. The old left have always had a partial view of free speech and academic freedom, seeing them as a privilege for those who hold acceptable views. Unlike them, Rammell is consistent. Free speech and academic freedom within the law is not a partisan matter for him. Where he does not differ from the left, as previously mentioned, is in having an instrument view of academic freedom serving certain social ends by combating extremism. That said, he clearly defends defeating their arguments and just not refusing to hear them. What motivates him is the fear that, unless academic freedom is used to challenge extremist views, then academic freedom will be undermined by violent extremism. Despite this unusual defence of academic freedom by a government minister, the general climate of fear leads to universities seeing building community cohesion and in the future the surveillance of overseas students as their business. Already there are absurd actions being taken by university authorities in a panic about extremism. The paradigm example of which is the University of Nottingham calling in the police because a member of staff had downloaded the al-Qaeda Training Manual, something freely available on the Internet and on US government web sites (Nilsen et al., 2008). Such incidents are sure to increase. Fifth: Absolute Academic Freedom and Free Speech are no longer possible because most Speech is now Potentially Harmful The tired example of the limits to free speech, that derives from Justice Oliver Wendell Jones, that it is unacceptable to falsely shout Fire in a crowded theatre, has had a revival in popular discussions of free speech. The only change is that Cinema replaces Theatre. Wendell Jones was upholding the conviction of two socialists for
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giving out anti-draft leaets. This act, like shouting Fire, was beyond even the most stringent protection of free speech and so, by inference, giving out anti-draft materials constituted a clear and present danger and could not be protected. Is shouting Fire in this way free speech? Consider this alternative question: Is pressing the re alarm in a crowded cinema free speech? Obviously it is not. It is action. There is little attention given to this false analogy in the academic freedom literature but interested academics could make a start by looking at Alan Dershowitzs analysis Shouting Fire (1989). The analysis of the analogy is not of interest here where we are concerned with its use as an example of an undeniable limit to free speech. This rhetorical use has a simple aim: to blur the distinction between speech and action. At a discussion hosted by the Henry Jackson Society at the House of Commons in November 2008 on Legal Jihad: How Islamist lawfare is stiing Western free speech on Radical Islam the speaker, Brooke Goldstein, used this example to justify restrictions on free speech, and a member of the audience observed that perhaps issues were so contentious now that all speech on important matters was like shouting Fire in a crowded cinema. He apologised for his inarticulate expression of his thoughts, but the idea was profound. In public and academic debate any utterance can now be deemed hurtful, offensive and harmful. It is an ironic extension of Mills harm principle to all speech. It is impossible to argue that free speech and academic freedom have been constrained by a false analogy. But something has changed to allow so crude an assimilation of speech and (psychological) harm. Explaining that change explains what has altered in our understanding of free speech and academic freedom. 3. What is Academic Freedom? Despite these fearful attitudes and the arguments that see academic freedom as difcult, contested and problematic it is a very simple matter. When Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF) was founded and several people, including myself, Simon Davies, Dolan Cummings, Roy Harris and James Woudhuysen among others were wording the statement of academic freedom, we gave a shorthand denition as the responsibility to speak your mind and challenge conventional wisdom (see www.afaf.org.uk; Fuller, 2009; Hayes, 2006). It has an echo of Edgars injunction at the end of King Lear to Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Academic freedom is not complicated. The AFAF statement is an injunction to say what you think and applies to academics and to students. What is difcult or
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complicated about that? Unless you want to complicate it and to complicate it is an attempt to undermine both freedom of speech and academic freedom. Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom The use of the term speech here refers to rational speech and not the mere utterance of sounds, invective or curses. The Fire example and its contemporary and more challenging versions, such as Hizb ut-Tahrirs obsession with insulting Islam or the Prophet, are not relevant to free speech in this sense. They are misleading and the only connection with free speech is that both involve the utterance of sounds. But as the example of setting off the re alarm shows, sounds are not required to cause distress or indeed to insult someones religion. The issue of whether or not to ban words/deeds that insult is another matter that cannot be addressed here, though the best answer is not to prosecute unless the context clearly shows that the utterance or expression is action and not poorly articulated speech. This is not to confuse free speech and academic freedom. Indeed the very separation of them requires that academic freedom is merely another phrase for academic research. Once this idea is rooted in peoples minds, whatever else is said can be arrogantly dismissed as merely the free speech of citizens or opining. This is to put the distinction politely and it is often put in a way that shows academic contempt for ordinary people and their views. The distinction between academic freedom and free speech shows a professional narrowness about academic life that is essentially anti-intellectual. New and interesting old ideas do not just arise in the classroom or laboratory but in the student union, in bars, in campus debates and the various common rooms. The attempt by think tanks to create Caf Society through Coffee House Debates and Philo Pubs shows some awareness of what is lacking in contemporary academic life. A better way of looking at both is to see them as part of a continuum: speech leads to questions and to research which leads to further questions and further research and so on. Reality is not as tidy as this but the academy is the place where, in any civilised society, ideas of any sort can be expressed and challenged or taken up and then challenged in this way. As Roy Harris has argued, free speech is foundational. It takes priority over all others because without it the very concept of freedom is lost (Harris, 2005). It has this priority because forming our own opinions on the basis of experience includes the experience
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of the opinions of others. But if others are not free to voice their opinions, we cannot reliably learn what they believe or why. If we restrict freedom of speech in any way it makes freedom of thought impossible. The responsibility of individuals to speak their mind requires that the academy, which embodies academic freedom, has a similar responsibility to undertake what Harris calls their primary duty to champion freedom of speech against all encroachments by legislators, pressure groups and trends in public opinion (Harris, 2005). These are individual and corporate responsibilities. A third responsibility can also be drawn out of the remark, mentioned at the beginning of this paper, that academic freedom comes with responsibilities. What is normally meant is a contingent responsibility such as not upsetting students, and making them feel safe. These sorts of external injunctions are just that and have no connection with academic freedom. They are moral or emotional pressures. The responsibility that comes with academic freedom is logically connected with it. That responsibility is the requirement to try to be clear, coherent, truthful and to constantly question your beliefs. This is an epistemological responsibility and it is the only responsibility that is implied by academic freedom. The idea that there should be contingent restrictions on academic freedom imposed by government, managers, equalities or ethics committees is something new and shows a lack of condence in academic freedom that is a pointer to what differentiates the contemporary understanding of academic freedom from previous understandings. 4. A Short History of Academic Freedom In the last Penguin Education Special, an edition on Academic Freedom, Anthony Arblaster begins his discussion with this statement: Academic freedom which is a rather pompous term for freedom of, and within, education is today under threat from several quarters, and urgently needs to be defended. And the need is not merely to defend what there is, but to extend freedom into institutions and areas where it barely exists at all except as a hollow phrase, repeated in the equally hollow rituals (speech days, degree ceremonies and the like) in which a fossilised education system celebrates its own conservatism. Academic freedom and democracy go hand in hand. For the principal, though not the only,
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threats to freedom in education derive from the authoritarian structures of educational institutions. A society which constantly advertises itself as free and democratic manages to tolerate an extraordinary degree of authoritarianism within almost all its major institutions. The contradiction between pretensions and practice is unlikely to last indenitely. Sooner or later a choice will have to be made between greater freedom and democracy or less. There are signs that our rulers have already made their choice for repression. The rest of us have to decide whether to accept this or resist. (Arblaster, 1974, p. 9) Setting Arblasters views out at length here is an attempt to address ahistorical approaches to academic freedom. His opening paragraph sets the concern with academic freedom as part of a struggle to win wider freedom and democracy within state institutions and wider society. His designation of the term academic freedom as pompous is an attempt to put it in its rightful place within that wider struggle. Today there is no such movement to democratise social institutions. Even the Council for Academic Freedom and Democracy (CAFD), for whom he wrote the book, has, in line with the decline in the struggle for freedom and democracy, become the Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards (CAFAS) (my italics). It is easy to forget that until the end of the last century freedom to speak even wrongly and foolishly was lauded and restrictions or limits were minor and restricted to actions such as Jew-baiting or Negrobaiting, and it was always held to be essential for people to be critical of every proposal that asks for a surrender of liberty (Laski, 1972, p. 128). Today, arguing for bans and restrictions on liberty rather than the criticism of bans and restrictions is the norm. Harold J. Laski, who made this demand that we criticise all proposals to surrender liberty, gives this account of the importance of freedom of the mind: [I]f his experience is to count, a man must be able to state it freely. The right to speak it, to print it, to seek in concert with others its translation into the event, is fundamental to liberty. If he is driven, in this realm, to silence and inactivity, he becomes a dumb and inarticulate creature whose personality is neglected in the making of policy. Without freedom of the mind and of association a man has no means of self-protection in our social order. He may speak wrongly or foolishly; he may associate with others for purposes that are abhorrent to the majority of men. Yet a denial of his right to do these things is a denial of his happiness. Thereby he becomes an instrument of other peoples ends and not himself an end. (Laski, 1972, pp. 7273)
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Laskis book LIBERTY was republished many times over half a century and remains a reminder of how liberty of the mind perhaps a better term than academic freedom was cherished because people have no other means of self-protection in society. The contemporary assumption is the reverse; that society and the state must protect people from speech and not allow those who speak wrongly or foolishly, or work towards abhorrent purposes, to do so. This action is for their own and other peoples protection. This is not to deny that academic freedom was at that time seen by some to be a special kind of freedom that transcended the normal conceptions of freedoms in that it involves exceptional privileges (Robbins, 1966, p. 46). This is certainly true, but the context, not the content and justication, of this professional privilege is most important. When that context was no longer present it became almost impossible for academics to defend that privilege. We can mark the end of the historical phase in which free speech and academic freedom were seen as part of a wider struggle for greater liberty and democracy with the collapse of communism in 1989 and with it the idea of alternative visions of society. The reasons for this claim and the political background most relevant to the arguments in this paper are discussed elsewhere (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008, ch.7). Sufce to say that it was around this time that people looked more and more to the state to grant liberties. The classic example of a state-granted liberty in relation to freedom of the mind is the amendment to the 1988 Education Reform Act moved by Lord Hillhead, better known still as Roy Jenkins. This statement of academic freedom is today part of the articles and instruments of governance of almost all universities and colleges in the UK. It gives academics freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions. The statement seemed to settle the matter except for the caveats and university mission statements that undermine its efcacy. These qualications to the statement, formal and informal, can only lead to a climate of fear. Conrad Russell, author of a book about Academic Freedom shortly after the act became law, makes this comment about fear and how it can incline academics towards self-censorship: The point is not that academics may not be dismissed for their opinions: it is that they need freedom from fear that they might be so dismissed. Without it, they cannot be counted on to do their work well. A saint, or indeed a particularly rumbustious sinner,
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might well succeed in doing his best work under the threat of dismissal. Many people, though, are made of less stern stuff. The temptation to trim unpopular conclusions, to cut out the extra sentence which unambiguously spells out the provocative nding, is one to which most academics are not immune. (Russell, 1993, p. 23) Legal defences cannot create a climate in which freedom of the mind ourishes because they were not fought for by academics but given. Academic struggle, like the wider struggle for freedoms, had vanished. Today the Hillhead amendment remains for the most part hidden by management and forgotten by staff. It may seem to readers that the situation in the United States is different and the debates about the rst amendment, political correctness and speech codes make for a more vibrant defence of freedom of the mind (see Downs, 2005). There is some truth in this but it must not be exaggerated, as this debate does not reect a struggle for liberty in wider society but often seems like internecine squabbling between departments, faculty and management. These snapshots from the history of academic freedom showing the decline from a vibrant politics of academic freedom to a defensive legalistic and narrow approach in the 1990s bring us to the present period and return us to the obsession with setting limits to academic freedom and the concern with (psychological) harm. 5. Academic Freedom for a Diminished Subject If we consider the arguments about limits set out above, there is a theme at times strong at other times weaker to all of them. This is of the vulnerable academic and student. The rst argument about normal limits is said to protect vulnerable, mostly ethnic groups as does the second argument about the threat from racists and fascists, but implies that these groups are vulnerable to hear these arguments. The third argument about marketisation implies that academics are unable to function and must be inevitable victims of business involvement in the sector. However, unlike the others, it does call for some resistance but as those who follow the arguments will know, that resistance is often on behalf of vulnerable groups, both students and academics, who need protection from the rapacious market. The fourth argument about extremists implies that students in particular are easily brainwashed without intervention from university management and academic staff. The nal argument about vigorous argument being potentially hurtful is perhaps the clearest example
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of the theme of vulnerability. This theme leads to a sixth argument which explains why free speech and academic freedom are everywhere limited. Sixth: Academic Freedom is to be Limited because of a Diminished View of Humanity Attitudes to young people are indicative of a societys attitude to itself, to how it sees the future of humanity. In looking at attitudes to students we can see how the academy, whose members articulate and institutionalise a philosophy of humanity, see those who will most inuence society as its graduates. The changed conception of a student is not as an autonomous person embarking on the pursuit of knowledge, but as a vulnerable learner. That the term learner rather than knower has wide currency today is a feature of the infantilisation of young people. They are treated as if they were still in the primary school. They are welcomed with their parents, they are recommended counselling courses to help them in the transition from school, courses in coping with stress and examinations. They face not challenging ideas but an army of support services all re-enforcing institutional and subjective perceptions of vulnerability. One new university in the north of England even produces a leaet suggesting that the study of academic and professional subjects might be psychologically upsetting. If you are studying nursing you might discover that people are sick, or in sociology that people are poor the conclusion is that you may need professional counselling help to cope. Examples of initiatives such as these are manifold and most readers will be familiar with them (see Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008, ch. 5; Hayes, 2005, 2009). Likewise lecturers are now asked to see themselves as lead learners and to give more of their time to counselling and supporting students. They too are stressed and bullied and increasingly in need of as much support as students. The higher education unions above all relish the role of supporting vulnerable lecturers and are forever researching stress and bullying and offering counselling lines and personal support (see Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008). In what is now almost a therapeutic environment vigorous challenges to young peoples ideas the traditional role of a university are going to be seen as attacks on them. Already criticism is being made the basis for legal remedies, I got a poor mark, and grade because you were too critical. You did not like me! The notion of being student-centred is now commonplace. Putting the student at the heart of the university means that the
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passing on and advancement of knowledge is not there. And if that student is seen as a vulnerable person whose vulnerability is your concern, then it is difcult to challenge their thoughts and beliefs. If we do not challenge beliefs, however hurtful this may be, we do not fail merely in our duty as academics but fail humanity. In a brilliant discussion of freedom of speech, philosopher Tony Skillen says this about challenging beliefs: Ones beliefs are close to the centre of who one is and criticism of them can cut deep and meet protective resistance. But it is of the essence of human rationality that beliefs are held as valid, as justied by their correspondence to what is the case. The mind expresses itself and thus exposes itself to change through criticism. Criticism and discussion respect these dimensions of rationality, whereas silencing smashes at them, practically denying the capacity, not only to reach views through some process of experience and reection, but to go beyond them through further formative activity. This contempt also applies to your status as hearer of speech, denying your capacity to reason and reect on what you hear. You are treated as if words could actually causally affect you in an almost physical way rather than through their according to your grasp of things and thus their being acceptable to you. (Skillen, 1982, p. 145) The perception we have of a young person, a student, and of humanity, is exemplied by the attitude that Skillen castigates as contempt. It expresses a profoundly diminished sense of human potential. 6. A Diminished Academic Freedom for a Diminished Subject This contempt in the university is a destructive form of self-contempt. If we no longer value freedom of the mind in the way described above we no longer value academic freedom. If we no longer value academic freedom, we may as well drop the concept altogether, as Stanley Fish suggests: Invoking academic freedom carries with it the danger of thinking that we are doing something noble and even vaguely religious, when in fact what we are doing, or should be interested in doing, is no more or less than our academic jobs. (Fish, 2008) The disappearance of the struggle to extend freedom and democracy, and the subsequent retreat to a legally granted contractual protection, left the academic world open to other societal inuences, in particular to the therapeutic culture that replaced that wider social
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and political struggle for liberty. Academics have a choice. To become another profession with no noble goals, or to accept the responsibility to defend free speech and academic freedom and hope to make the ivory tower a beacon for the defence of freedom in wider society. The choice between the noble and the ignoble is yours. 7. References
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