Academic Freedom Is Not the Freedom of Academics

This post responds to a recent post on the American Association of Professors publication, Academe, penned by Ross Jackson of Wittenberg University. He makes a case for academic freedom. I make a case for freedom of academics.

Asked many times by me and yet to be answered by others: Would we be facing a crisis in academic freedom or facing this in the same way, if academics were not the employees of inherited institutional employers but were also or instead licensed members of a legislated profession that enables them to earn a living as attorneys or physicians are enabled?

From this perspective, I respond to Ross and the widely shared view that academic freedom is necessary. Nothing will be lost in comprehending this post by not reading the Ross piece, which presents a very familiar affirmative position on the question of necessity.

Ross and his colleagues assume that higher education must be, can only be, provided and protected by the institutional model of our inheritance. Everyone assumes this. This violates our responsibility as academics to expose and explore assumption, especially when this failure is an act of self-harm and harm of other people who depend on our essential service and stewardship. Academics, like the AAUP, have left the freedom to work, the right to work, to contribute as an academic to the social pillar, exclusively in the hands of institutional hand-me-downs. In other words, the only way for academics to earn a living in higher education is to be an employee of a university or college.

Suppose the government imposed something similar on attorneys or physicians:

Attention please. Doctors, your services may now only be bargained for with tax dollars, provided you are directly employed by one of the state hospitals, over here and over there, but not here because we have enough doctors there and not here because we can’t afford to place doctors there. Of course, this does not bar private hospital employment or applying to open your own private hospital, where we will be happy to authorize someone to authorize you to take public money for your medical (and higher education) services. 

In all this institutional noise and interference, doctors can practice independently, on their own, in their own place, at their own time,… Academics cannot.

But maybe you think I confuse individual autonomy with academic freedom and academic freedom with personal freedom of expression? I do not. Consider this: If academic freedom is needed so that we can perform the service and stewardship that constitutes the only essential labour that works to answer the siren of the social pillar, then is a similar freedom necessary to answer the sirens of law or medicine? Is there an attorney freedom? One that must be fought for, won and protected by bargaining it into contracts and defending it in courtrooms and courtyards, using attorneys who are paid for by faculty employees who have ironically educated and qualified their counsel for the independent practice of law? Explore this and you will find where I am.

Historically, a parade of authoritarian (leaning) individuals and ensembles, from crown to cabinet, have used these institutions to flex, with academics emerging as captive employees and awkward champions of solidarity, who think tenure, shared governance, and academic freedom are essential to career, calling and cultivation. And I suppose they are correct, if you assume a mono-model world.

For me, I’ll stick with the freedom that was mine at birth and the academic that I have worked to become. More importantly, because no one can deny my natural freedom (of expression) or that what I am now (as a worker) is an academic, what I demand is that I be enabled to exercise these two fundament features of me, without the so-called need of academic freedom to protect me from crown, cabinet, college, or colleague. While the Ross-et-als speak of freedom reduced to a clause in a two-year employment contract, I speak of freedom codified in the constitutions of nations and professional societies, but present from the moment of birth. 

Academic freedom is not fundamental, not like the freedom of my personal and professional expression. Not like the freedom to provide for myself, the people closest to me and ones I have yet to meet in the community. It’s simple: If I am professionally licensed to do outside the employ of some inheritance what I have done many times inside these monolithic institutions, then who or what is to threaten my (academic) freedom as an academic (or citizen)? Explore this suggestion, please. But in a model constituted of academics in professional society and practice - as one finds in law or medicine - the centuries-old threat posed by these institution frontmen-slash-middlemen is hobbled.

How would the checks on authoritarianism that Ross identifies be affected if an academic can walk away from institutional employment and continue to earn a living in higher education, continue to assume and act on public or professional responsibility to expose, analyze, speak, protest, publish…?

The response from academics (it seems) is to assume institutional employment and push for unionization, as protection (from?). But it is a mistake to assume union-represented faculty employment is the only form of labour protection for the only essential labour in higher education. We should at least explore an alternative, after so many centuries of assumption.

Race, religion, ethnicity, dialect, gender, sex, alma mater, neighbourhood,…all operate as conditionals. Such gates will always be with us, I suppose. The question is how wide are the gates, or, put another way, how much room is there inside for: women, Jews, blacks, Protestants, tattoos, WASPs, Wiccans, and Warlocks?

So, which is easier to widen, which can make more room?

a) A model with centuries-old institutional employers as gatekeepers whose remittance hobbles us all and academics to the point that we seek autoworker labour unions to protect ourselves from our own universitas.

b) A new, openly formed professional gatekeeper that licenses and supports individuals in their service and stewardship, as academics exercise independent professional prerogative across all aspects of their contribution to higher education in a universitas that has no need of a university.

Academic freedom is a threat to authoritarianism, says Ross. Well, I’ll meet you halfway: freedom is an existential threat to authoritarianism. The academic part is merely bargained for, negotiated, and these days with the hope that this becomes the standard – a sea of strikes and employment contracts that clause academic freedom and expiration dates. Anyway, enough of that absurdity. Let’s look at this lauded societal shield attributed to academic freedom to see how it's been used by faculty employees in the exercise of shared governance of their employer. The results are tragic irony, of course, but let’s push through. It goes like this:

a) The more expensive and marginally funded your operation, the more vulnerable it is to: corruption, complicitly, collapse, compromise, co-opting, capitalization, corporatization, conservativism,…

b) The inheritance is perpetually underfunded and increasingly expensive, so it is vulnerable to: pandemics, political possies, publication prostitution and protection rackets, partnerships with authoritarians of every stripe, Ponzi schemes and point drops in the markets, paper mills, parchment mills, General Mills,…

c) Internationalization of higher education enables institutions to collaborate, co-operate, and some other co’s with a nation such as China.

d) There is no academic freedom in China’s universities and colleges, which are institutions under the direct control of an unelected authoritarian party, the Chinese Communist Party.

e) It is disingenuous to tout the laurels of academic freedom while in numerous substantial ways undermining it through the assumption of institutional collaborations with the CCP; which, did I mention, is not an obscure, would-be authoritarian regime but a posterchild for jackboots.

f) Now, while the hypocrisy is indeed bitter, my aim is to poke at another wound, one academics don’t even know they have incurred. When there is available a perfectly viable alternative model that substantially reduces pillar vulnerability of all sorts, how do academics, their union bosses, and their institutional bosses see their intentional propping up of a mass-murdering authoritarian gang as action that effectively checks authoritarianism, rather than an unconscionable act pressed by the desperation of a long-broken higher education model - and the failure of academics to serve and steward?

Let me anticipate a response: ‘If only the government were to properly fund universities and colleges, they (we) wouldn’t…’. But we have long passed that juncture in thought and reality. Catch up.

In the reality we face, suppose you said to your monopolistic institutional employer, "No, I won't have it. I won't work for an institution that invests in, collaborates with, welcomes,... I quit!" In that moment, you have not just quit this institutional employer, you have quit higher education. Think about that, please. After which, what? Search for another employer, somewhere, somewhen, while society continues under the university and college model and you are barred from contributing to higher education. 

Ross says in the Academe piece, “It agitates against the status quo and challenges those in power, making it a vital social function.” What does? Academic freedom? I agree that this is truly valuable service to society. So, let’s have more of that please! But academic freedom is not a necessary precondition for its existence or abundance. Any more than something like a comparable attorney freedom is needed to provide the service and stewardship that the professional model does for the equally valued social pillar of law.

When you say ‘academic’ do you refer to someone employed by an institution? I don’t. Not only. Are academics free to contribute to higher education when not in the employ of a university or college? Could one make a career of it, support a family or community?

It is not about academic freedom. It is about the freedom of academics. It always has been. Step outside the boxes and "agitate" (don’t bargain), "challenge" (don’t assume), and perform your "vital social function" (don’t cloister in union offices). Without the freedom of academics, the institutional tools of our inheritance will continue to splinter us, interfere with us, and be used as authoritarian armament against us. Without the work of academics, these tools are nothing. This is the definition of bitter irony, while unionphiles think this makes their bargaining position stronger. It does in a way. But dig deeper and notice how it makes my position stronger still.

I have not read the paper by, Ross (et. al.), and probably won’t. I don’t have to. We agree on the fundamentals - definition, function, value, and obligation – expected of the social contract for teaching, researching and community servicing. We disagree on how best to facilitate our service and stewardship. These academics have assumed the institutional model. I have not. I suggest you do the same. But I will endorse a version of Ross's petition and continue to speak out against further erosion of the freedom of academics. Thank you for your work. And feel free to join me in mine.