“Academic Freedom: It’s Concept, Its History, Its Successes, and Its Failures.”
“Without Freedom of Thought There Can be No Such Thing as Wisdom and No Such Thing as Public Liberty Without Freedom of Speech.” by Benjamin Franklin. The discussions that are done globally on Academic Freedom engulf controversy clashing into nature of humans such as morals, values, virtues, tradition and principles. This made the concept of academic freedom to be translucent which can be defined and understand but cannot follow. In the nerve of cracking the taboos all around, academic freedom itself became a taboo.
No one can stop a people to think but the freedom of speech of those particular people who have higher information which is never brought before and is substantial, is violated. Well, the other side of this coin being academic freedom hurt the sentiments of other people following by out of control act which leads to chaos and might also include this to be potential danger politically and economically. Other put it as a violation of turning public into weapons in the search of higher knowledge and pursues it in a negative way.
All of this end up in suppressing the people who are capable of letting the world to learn a new fact or to break the taboo of the society by enlightenment and the tool these days used to do this is by politically suppressing the people challenging them their daily life or by power, influence, terror, restriction and ones need to show the other about their own supremacy.
Now the bright side being learning and pursue the truth by academic freedom a group of people which are bothered by similar question tend to come together and make it a project to know what is the actual truth of that particular topic and explore it until they finally come to a satisfactory conclusion. But seeing the necessity of making special rules and orders by the legislature academic freedom is always under threat. It is so vastly mistake concept that people are creating an environment to accept the concept of academic freedom.
The concept of academic freedom is quite simple but it does have consequences. The concept being a person able to pursue knowledge and gather around facts without any risk or pressure to prove what they found out and are free to share it with others. And others are free to learn the new theory or cling on to the traditional concept in a risk free and pressure free manner. This concept is a so delicate that ironically the laws made to protect it also states that the information which need to be told have restrictions and boundaries of its own which is a example of how the academic freedom a concept of fighting for the truth and sharing the same without boundaries have its own boundaries.
Academic freedom might be a new name to the era but is an old practice right from ancient times. For example, the masterminds of the ancient world being ridiculed on their theories of the evolution of the world to the shape and structure of earth.
History:
“Only a strong and united scientific opinion imposing the intrinsic value of scientific progress on society at large can elicit the support of scientific inquiry by the general public.” – Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi was the evidently first person who fought for academic freedom by reaching out in masses. He was thus recorded in history due to the meeting of Polanyi and Nikolai Bukharin in association with John Baker in 1936. Together they found a society for freedom in science. This was the first known place where scientist had freedom to dig deeper in to the facts and truths of a certain idea and a group of similar kind of people researched and debated their ideas for the topic.
This is being adopted by many other universities later but with restriction such as disclosure so on. This academy helped teachers and students to ask questions to know more and more information about different aspects. This became a challenge to the people who wanted to control the information as it could prove devastating politically or economically. As till now there is no specific way we could say we actually got academic freedom since the people interested to share new information or to learn this new information were subjected to fear job loss or imprisonment or by any way which could one could easily demolish a common everyday life.
Thus limiting the source of knowledge entity by one’s own fear for their life. All the efforts of Michael Polanyi and his associates, America took up initiatives for a campaign which include lecturers, academic staff and researches who want to make a public statement whoever is in favor of free enquiry or of free expression. By which today we could say that a scientist or researcher or an academic staff are safe to use their right to know or to express or to let people know. This campaign has two principles of its own them being, firstly being that academics have no restrictions what so ever in asking or knowing things. They have the liberty to question and test the information already available without being offended or can also discuss the most controversial topics without being restricted. Secondly, academic institution have no right to restrain the freedom of the members involved or their staff or to use this as a ground for restriction or violation of law or debarred or dismissal.
Thus the starting of three people made it a revolution to make sure that academics or researchers or scientist, whoever is in pursuing pure knowledge or said by them as truth have made it around the globe so that different countries made sure of providing a law and amendments in their legislature to protect the freedom of speech of people and thus protect this evolution of academic freedom.
For example different countries as France, Germany, The Philippines, South Africa and the United States have made sure of including protective law and amendments in their constitution to protect public for their academic freedom.
But contrary to this there are new formation of groups and classification of tribes who do not want their religion, people, sentiment or any other aspect the academics could give them hence forth they started to terrorize the people with superstition so that whenever there is a person who ask a question or doubt the truth about believe they are subjected as the people violated the law henceforth making arrangements by the means of violence or imprisonment or death as the penalty for academics.
Such kind of a violence ripped the academics from the thoughts of higher or unknown knowledge. By so doing this they also avoid controversial topics off the desk and also protect their people for still believing in things which traditions taught them.
As a coin this subject has two sides one being destructive and other being constructive. But evidently from 1936, the destructive side has flourished through nations and the constructive side never got much credit as the destruction have got. Hence by this the countries had also made few changes accordingly as the world changed from back then to now. But till today there are few organizations and a particular group of people who do take pleasure in giving a message to other academics by killing the ones they could get hold on. Ironically speaking about these organizations or group of people also comes under violation of law since this is a sensitive subject for the public.
Success stories:
There are quite a few success stories which did not end up on imprisonment or death of an academic and the proof of that would be the AFAF which stand for Academics for Academic Freedom established in United Kingdom. This agrees to the principles of academic freedom and the academics who could not express their opinions. Thus helping them to observe the options and opinions on this leading topic to an open further debate. They help the academics to help people in turn to know the actual meaning behind their taboos and superstition and also the actual meaning of things which till now are perfectly scored under tradition. This also believes in having an open view about new inventions and discoveries. Since a debate is considered as a mean to see things in different light, people protecting their views and the proof of new discovery would make a major mark on the existing of reality and truth helping the academics to know better.
The major success of academic freedom includes "You stand for Academic Freedom, for the right of private judgment, for a duty more incumbent upon the scholar than upon any other man, to tell the truth as he sees it, to claim for himself and to give to others the largest liberty in seeking after the truth." – By President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 for Bassett Affair at Duke University, North Carolina researchers and teachers are fully independent and enjoy full freedom of speech in the course of their research and teaching activities, provided they respect, following university traditions and the dispositions of this code, principles of tolerance and objectivity". The nomination and promotion of professors is largely done through a process of peer view rather than through normal administrative procedures. – France "Art and science, research and teaching are free. Freedom of teaching does not absolve from loyalty to the constitution". In a tradition reaching back to the 19th century, jurisdiction has understood this right as one to teach, study, and conduct research freely, although the last concept has sometimes been taken as a cover term for the first two. being a right of professors to determine the content of their lectures and to publish the results of their research without prior approval. – Germany
"Academic Freedom shall be enjoyed in all institutions of higher learning." Philippine jurisprudence and courts of law, including the Philippine Supreme Court tend to reflexively defer to the institutional autonomy of higher institutions of learning in determining academic decisions with respect to the outcomes of individual cases filed in the courts regarding the abuse of Academic Freedom by professors, despite the individual merits or demerits of any cases. – The Philippines
The above given are the laws and amendments made by those respected countries to protect the academics so that they will not be pressurized how so ever to exhibit their freedom of speech and have open discussion on sensitive or controversial topics. This a major mark on the history made by the supporters of freedom of speech.
Failures:
Academic freedom to till date is violated through people by terrorizing the academics, researcher or scientist so that there would not be any questions asked so that the people who do not wanted other to know the truth might be knowing by this or to protect the people and their sentiments from the truth as they call it.
In the 257 countries across the globe there are only few places safe for academics to tell their opinion out loud or discuss them openly one of them being AFAF. But remaining places are threatened by the organizations or groups of people or by the government in that country which limit an academic freedom to speak and to think.
There are beheading, losses of job, issue of summons, imprisonment, loss of life, banishment … so on is the list of things which an academic with a positive opinion on academic freedom face these days. In fact there are places where academics are also restricted to think of questioning the authority regarding its practices and beliefs.
The delicacy of the topic Academic Freedom is one itself a violation of law in many countries because this leads to controversies and debates which might then lead to rage of people who are either hurt by the discussion or think that they have been deprived of truth which in turn affects that region in a way challenging to the government, giving way in political perspective and correct reasoning failing to do so having consequences.
History have always taught its coming generation to fight, fight for freedom, fight with negative influences, negative thoughts and then to conquer. One of the most religious ancient teachings says to fight not only with others but also with yourself if there is a need for that. Being politically and religion wise accepted globally the above, still there are certain restrictions which are tied to tradition without meaning.
Scholars, researchers, scientists, students and teachers who ever have an experience with telling people about their knowledge which opposes the information which is prescribed have undergone humility, vilification, loss of dignity, normal life, imprisonment and finally end the story by death. Again ironically there is eradication going on till today for the people who seek academic freedom to an extensive violence in the hope that no one will ever fight for their freedom. No one will ever come out with the concept again and let the world know about the quest for truth.
Contrary to this, few people but with mass following still carrying out campaigns or fighting to give general awareness about the issue of academic freedom and what it actually do for a better learning. Not only to know but to pursue. To let people know the truth of the actual intention behind the idea of academic freedom and the truth about how it is being presented to masses due to the controversies surrounding it.
Academic freedom was existing right from the ancient times where explorers, mathematicians, physicist, … gave their way to prove the fact of new learning and tell the people of the world about the existence of earth to new technology through which they laid foundation for academic freedom but the acceptance of the concept then and now is still controversial and delicate.