Abroad thoughts from home

Tuesday May 18, 2010

Dennis Hayes argues that we need to invoke the spirit of John Stuart Mill at home as well as abroad on International Academic Freedom Day (20 May)

Professor Patrick McGhee, the new vice-chancellor of the University of East London, is reported as saying ‘Academic freedom is the freedom to speak, the freedom to explore controversial ideas despite how challenging those ideas may be to the state.”

But there is always a “but” (1). McGhee fears the phrase has been “hijacked by other interests” who use it in “petty employment disputes while their peers elsewhere face oppression and violence” (2). This message is a familiar one in domestic life and politics: “Stop complaining and eat your dinner, there are children starving in Africa! ... “How can you complain about being hard up when there are people living on less than a dollar a day?”

The academic freedom version of this poor analogical argument is “How can you say university managers are attacking academic freedom in the UK when in other countries speaking up means you may be shot?” What is insulting to those who are oppressed and persecuted abroad is that even their plight is used by university managers to attempt to discipline their own academic employees. Why not a simple stand against attacks on academic freedom anywhere? That would be noble.

When Academics For Academic Freedom declared the birth date of John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty, 20 May, as International Academic Freedom Day, our focus was not on how relatively comfortable academics in liberal Western could support those suffering persecution abroad, but to raise the issue of academic freedom everywhere. There are almost daily attacks on academic freedom in even the most liberal countries and they are just as important, even more important, for Western academics to take up. If you don’t defend academic freedom in your own backyard you can’t consistently defend it elsewhere.

AFAF has learned that even raising the question of academic freedom in the abstract was not easy in liberal democracies and very dangerous in many countries. Defending academic freedom in the West may affect your career. In illiberal countries career suicide may be the least consequence of speaking out. AFAF members around the world have had even the most philosophical events proscribed.

AFAF’s position is that here and in liberal democracies the issue is simple: just speak up! In other countries it is a tactical decision about what is done and when. Even in the most repressive regimes something can be done, even a dialogue in a sitting room with close friends in Socratic style. International martyrs for academic freedom are not required or being trained by AFAF!

We do not need to train anyone because all academics wherever they live are, by definition, critical beings and will come up against opposition to their ideas from time to time and have to defend their academic freedom. Even the complacent and compliant can fall foul of sudden changes in government policy. Even more likely they will find they fall foul of some new code of conduct that seeks to regulate not only behaviour but thinking by eliding the line between the two.

That is why AFAF defends academic freedom and free speech whether or not what is said is deemed ‘offensive’. The allegation that what is said or argued or thought is offensive is the challenge that allows that sleight of mind and makes intellectual offence similar to physical offence and requires some policing from university authorities. Causing intellectual offence is the job of academics and International Academic Freedom Day ought to be the occasion of a reminder to Patrick McGhee and other university managers and administrators that intellectual offence is no offence, even if it challenges you.

Dennis Hayes is speaking at a University and College Union open meeting on ‘The Limits of Academic Freedom’ at the University of Derby on 20 May 2010.

AFAF has support from many organisations for its declaration of 20 May as International Academic Freedom Day including the University and College Union, the Manifesto Club, The Great Debate, and, of course The Free Society. For more information about AFAF and International Academic Freedom Day visit www.afaf.org.uk .

References
(1) Dennis Hayes (2008) Academic freedom means free speech and no buts, The Free Society, 4 March 2008

(2) Hannah Fearn (2010) Where freedom is just a dream, THE, 22 April 2010