The proper scope of academic freedom

This piece was written for and first appeared on the Heterodox STEM Substack, and was inspired by this Tweet:

“You can’t complain about attempts to shut down gender critical views in universities, and support the closing down of gender studies depts or courses on queer theory. You either support academic freedom or you don’t. Unfortunately, many people, including many academics, don’t understand academic freedom, or why it’s so important.” — Colin Wight, Professor Emeritus (International Relations)

Perhaps I’m one of the many academics who don’t understand academic freedom, but oh yes I can do both of those things! I don’t see academic freedom in such stark terms, and want to make a distinction between teaching and scholarship.

By “teaching” I’m referring to official courses run by a university, usually for credit towards a degree. I argue that academics don’t have “academic freedom” to do as they wish when teaching. A university should be dedicated to truth-seeking enquiry based on evidence and reason, and the courses it runs and the degrees that it awards carry its imprimatur. I don’t think that a university should run courses that promote creationism or Mormon theology or Queer Theory, or anything else where evidence and reason take a back seat to ideology, even if some academics want to teach it and even if some students want to take it.

Edinburgh University should value academic enquiry above ideology

Jonathan Haidt declared that universities could either be about seeking truth or about seeking social justice, but not both. Nowadays, with academics in the humanities and social sciences skewing heavily left, many have adopted Marx’s dictum: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.

And so it is that universities are increasingly declaring contentious and ideological notions as orthodoxy, and then demanding assent. This will only get worse unless people speak up against it, so, as a university academic, here goes: