Academic Freedom Is Not the Freedom of Academics

This post responds to a recent post on the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 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 crisis 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.

The Inheritance, The Assumption

On and off, for over thirty years, I’ve tried to raise awareness of assumptions surrounding the service and stewardship of higher education. For instance, if I ask, where is higher education, what’s your immediate thought? Or if I ask who provides it, what’s your response? Or to whom are you applying for it? To whom are you paying for it?

Mass diagnosis of the assumptions of others is perilous, so wish me luck.

The hypothesis is that the failure of others to entertain PSA is in part the result of unexamined assumption. Assumption being the work yard of philosophers, I hazard a guess that, for most people, a principal response triggered by such questions includes the institutions of our inheritance. Universities and colleges are what comes to mind whenever we reflect, discuss, dream, organize, bargain, teach, graduate, discover, publish, pixelate, politicize, ……or try to improve our social pillar. Higher education action and thought is scribed, even sculpted, by these institutions and the ethos they embody, covering everything from student meals and academic research to government fund-trolling and global economies.

I do not assume this institutional inheritance. I recommend you do the same.

PSA Offers an Area of Research

Thirty years ago, Dr. Peter March, Dr. Robert Ansel and myself sketched in some detail the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model and then tried to raise awareness for it. This is a model that does not rely on university and college employment for the public provision of academic services (i.e., teaching, researching and community servicing). There is no model like it, standing as the only comprehensive challenge to our inherited model of institutional employers and enrollers. Since that time, PSA has been further developed and disseminated. This PSA blog is a record of both.

As philosophers, we are not expert in fields that (ought to) contribute to the construction of an alternative model for the provision of higher education (HE). Suppose you are one such established or aspiring expert, looking for a fresh thesis topic, an unspoken hypothesis, then this post might be for you.

There is in this professional model the opportunity to explore a new area of research, call it: Alternative Higher Education Models (AHEM). I recognize that calling for alternative, change, reform, or revolution in the sector is obscenely common and deplorably misleading. None, I repeat, none of it references an alternative to the HEI model. All light filters through this institutional lens, and what a kaleidoscope of calamity it presents. This must be acknowledged, if alternative, change, reform, or revolution is to gain footing. Anything less is relegated to a footnote of the HEI model.

This post is about something intellectual, something academic: possibility.

The US, UK, Canada, Australia...All Suffer the Same Institutional Model

How would you like to be on the Office for Students Register? I sure would! Here are some of the benefits that come with the registration, assessment, and investigation fees:

Bet I could get on teaching, researching and community servicing in England, if I register. Maybe print some business cards with these bullets, or hang a classy framed version on my wall, maybe a website that emphasizes the value this Register enables in my service to the public. Certainly, it’s excellent promotion for a tertiary/post-secondary/higher education (HE) practice. Nothing screams value in the HE sector like the phrase, power “to award its own degrees.”

SMU, FU, So I Can Do What I Do!

Saint Mary’s University (SMU), in Canada, is one of my previous employers. The institution is presently having budgetary problems that impact employment and so the higher education it is meant to facilitate. What a surprise. Here’s another, the response from the faculty employee labor union: Solidarity, redeemable at any Tim’s or Sobey’s and telling the President to fuck off.

It doesn’t dawn on the parties that these two acts – one of solidarity, the other of schism – embody the fracture of higher education, or that reoccurring episodes of such schizophrenia might be an indicator of deeper problems with the higher education institutional model of universities and colleges.

This all might be amusing, except they deserve it and so many others do not.