Let’s Discuss Intellectual and Academic Freedom
by Janet Salmons, Ph.D., Research Community Manager for Sage Methodspace
“Experienced in varying degrees worldwide, academic freedom has been based throughout its history on the belief that it is beneficial to society for truth to be pursued.” (Kurian, 2011)
For the professor and scholar, intellectual and academic freedom are intertwined. We need the freedom to think, inquire, and imagine in order to freely carry out the activities of our professions. To begin, let’s simply define these terms: academic freedom refers to the freedom to read and teach, research and write about any topic or problem without fear of reprisal and without jeopardizing your career. Intellectual freedom is more far-reaching, signifying the freedom to be curious and inquisitive, to ask hard questions, and discuss challenging, perhaps provocative topics.
To explore the ways current pressures influence decisions, I invited the editor and contributors to a special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, “Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique” to join in an online roundtable discussion. Questions we considered include:
What academic/intellectual freedom issues have implications for research/researchers in your institution/community/culture? (In other words, what are you experiencing, observing, studying about constraints on academic freedom?) How can or should we be studying or acting on threats to academic freedom?
What is the university’s role? What is the role of faculty?
In fighting for equity and justice? In supporting democracy?
In supporting colleagues or students who choose to study hot-button, sensitive, or risky topics?
What do you recommend to researchers and research supervisors?
We hope our discussion will spur conversation with your colleagues and students. If you would like to contribute your thoughts or experiences on the topic of academic and intellectual freedom, please contact me.
Participants in the discussion:
Marc Spooner, editor, “Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique” Qualitative Inquiry, 29(3–4), 407–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221131018
Leslie Williams and Sandy Grande, co-authors of “Trumpocalypse and the Historical Limits of Higher Education Policy: Making the Case for Study/Struggle” Qualitative Inquiry, 29(3–4), 432–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004211014615*
Abstract. This essay highlights the limits of liberal reform policies designed to increase access to higher education for minoritized and marginalized groups. First, we discuss Trump’s higher education agenda, focusing on his antipathy toward these populations and his commitment to White supremacy. We then focus on affirmative action in college admissions as an exemplar of a liberal racial equity policy, sketching its history, which illustrates its anemic effect, and White countermobilization against change that existed long before Trump. Next, we detail Trump’s efforts to eliminate this policy, which is part of the same populist, ethno-nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Black ideological campaign that has galvanized White voters across time. Ultimately, we argue that unbridled power won’t yield to liberal reforms. As such, we shift our focus to how higher education might be reimagined as a site of transformation, offering a series of provocations for a new horizon of racial equity in universities and society.
Bryant Keith Alexander, author of “A Welcome, A Warning, and A Wish: On Entering a Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice in the Year 2020.”
Abstract. After the cancellation of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2020) due to the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), the substantive content of my presentation for the plenary, “Higher Education in the Time of Trump: Resistance and Critique” came into confluence with my invitation to deliver the 2020 Keynote to the 17th Incoming Cohort of the doctorate program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice, School of Education, Loyola Marymount University. This presentation delivered via ZOOM on June 18, 2020, calls forth a broader confluence of our current political climate under the “leadership” of Donald J. Trump, COVID-19, and national social justice activism linked with the Black Lives Matter Movement. Truly we are living protest and recovery in repressive times with a connectivity between the three. This message is both particular and plural to the audience that it was originally presented, and now to a diverse readership in these repressive times.
Michelle FIne, co-author of “ENCUENTROS: Decolonizing the Academy and Mobilizing for Justice”
Abstract. In this article, we try to capture a moment when we were relatively steady in our belief that as persons working in/through the academy, we are accountable to the temblores, to take up the project of decolonizing the curriculum, democratizing our pedagogy, and sharing the very space we occupy with those most affected by current assaults on immigrants and people of color in the United States. We still believe this, perhaps even more from our homes of quarantine. Our universities are obligated to build ligaments of solidarity—material, intellectual, political, ethical—and spaces of sanctuary.
More Methodspace Posts about Academic Freedom
This must-read article in The Scholarly Kitchen caught my attention: “Who Is Going to Make Money from Artificial Intelligence in Scholarly Communications?” See this thought-provoking interview with the author, Joseph Esposito.