Discussion
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Richard Rieben:

I do not understand what you are talking about. You are within a construct, and assume that other people are familiar with its dimensions. Presumably, you have existed within that construct as a student and/or are transitioning therein to part of the structure, qua teacher or researcher.

You describe the origins of the university as a corporation; initially a band of teachers who organized themselves to provide a peculiar training course to students (of a field or related fields of study), such as to prepare them for employment (usually, in that age, in government or church).

By your definition of "academia" I am hard put to understand what you are talking about if not a simple "school" in its primary sense of "a place of education; facilitating learning of specific subjects." By extension, these places became centers of research, funded either publicly or privately in particular fields of study (research grants, which pay for some specific information that will aid them in some manner; e.g., either to support a political policy/position, or to resolve a problem in some particular industry). Research centers may also be funded independently of a university/school setting (and therefore apart from "academia"), either by voluntary contributions within a particular industry, or within a particular company/corporation.

Your definition seems to consider only the realm of a university qua education/research facility, moreover one that is legitimized in some sense by the public (i.e., chartered) if not supported by them wholly (i.e., it may receive, additionally, private tuition of students, and grants for specific research funded by trusts or industries). Perhaps in the main it is funded by public taxes, and therefore operated essentially by the government on "behalf of" the taxpayers, the people and/or society. By such a charter, it is mandated to perform to the benefit of its supporters, as determined by their agents - mostly politicians, except in the case of industry grants, which may be as specific as they like, or by nonsubservient and demanding students, who may suggest that their education is something they are perfectly capable of directing to their own advantage/benefit, inasmuch as they are paying the tuition for same (and are customers for a service/product).

Now, I am trying to come back round to this idea of "academic freedom" as postulated ... and perhaps it is only some sort of European ideal that I, as an American, do not have a ready grasp of, despite the spread of such public institutions in the States. There is a much stronger (to me) concept of private education in the history of my country. It may be all but non-existent in the present age, but the idea (and affects) lingers. It has been overridden by emigrant European cultural ideals of public institutions, leading me to wonder if, in Europe, you have less cultural history of such private centers of education, preceding and superior to the domination of public institutions. Perhaps only the guilds, then?

Academic freedom, by your understanding : "the right of people within Academia to research any topic they like or express any thoughts they like" is incomplete, because you are also implying, contextually, the right to be paid for such whimsical pursuits from the public trough. Bluntly put.

Because, if you think about it outside your institutional context, every single human being possesses the RIGHT to research any topic they please and, under some kind of constitutional or contractual sociopolitical guarantees, "to express any thoughts they like." (freedom of speech).

What is missing, is that private individuals are able to do such a thing solely upon their own responsibility and through their own efforts, or, by convincing others that their pursuit is worthy of investment, through the voluntary support of other individuals.

The concept of "academic freedom" is ESSENTIALLY freedom from responsibility (except in some vague and corruptible sense to the public weal). This concept is the fatal flaw of the undertaking, which will always result in exactly those charges you empathetically cite brought against the institution, as well as your observations that the public's reliance on the authority of academia results in a degeneration into "idiocy."

I, as a private, self-supporting individual, am accountable only to myself (and my dependents, if any). You, as an employee, are accountable to your employer (in exchange for the payment you are receiving). Not to your "department head," mind you, but to your EMPLOYER. The problem of all government institutions is the loss of accountability through political corruption. Your employer is the taxpayer, who is not a voluntary employer in the first place, since all taxes are extortionary.

If, in some weird scenario, all taxes were voluntary, and the contributors were free to fund whatever aspects of "government" they considered important and relevant to them personally, then you would probably receive no funding whatsoever for your "academic freedom." Home-schooling would prove - again - superior to institutional education. Industry or guild education/training centers would provide certain specific technical training; private universities or schools would provide advanced or concentrated education in other fields along specific philosophical lines, and without a centralized, governmental/ecclesiastical power hierarchy of status, individual human beings would largely manage to support themselves and their dependents through skills acquired either through some educational facility or through independent study, such as make themselves able to market their skills or products to their own benefit and that of their fellows.

It is a scary concept, though it was once known as "America" (before the introduction of European concepts of corporation in the mid 1800's), if only as a spotty experience.

In such a scenario, there would be no such concept as "academic freedom," only individual freedom.

My perception, admittedly skewed by the lingering vestiges of a long-past legacy of political and economic freedom, is that "academic freedom" is a concept derived from a statist/ecclesiastic context of education, denoting irresponsibility, tied-up in corruption and pettiness, befogged with manners, niceness, politeness and other hypocrisies, and belonging in a chamber of horrors museum from a dark, dank and vicious age.

Unfortunately, we are living in that age now ...

For a contemporary study of the problem of institutions, qua institutions, and why they are counterproductive to human progress, and rife with pettiness, corruption and incompetence at producing rational results, I heartily recommend Doug Buchanan's InfoTech website at www.think.ws, with lengthy research and examination of the art and process of thinking rationally (noncontradictory identification of reality). Buchanan shows how and why institutions guarantee, by their composition, structure and definition, mediocrity ... most notably in the inability to process information without contradiction (i.e., thinking).

Now, you may be thinking (I am thinking) that surely, even as an American, now, today, I must be as seeped in the present age of institutional thinking as anyone in Europe. To demonstrate otherwise, I am going to relate a history, briefly, of education in my country.

At the end of the 1800's and into the first part of the 1900's, there was a private facility located in a town by the name of Walla Walla in Washington state. It was specifically a Teachers' College. I remember that back in the 1960's, I made a study of this institution and its philosophy, but I do not remember many of the details any longer. Suffice that, in its day, it was renown as one of the best (possibly the very best) teachers' college, by all standards known at the time, INTERNATIONALLY. Teachers came from all over the world to learn their craft at this college.

It died the same way that most private colleges and universities died in the America, by the intrusion of public funding for "competing" government institutions. RIP. But it's legacy didn't stop after it went out of business. I would say that a large percentage of the graduates of that college went on to find employment in nearby towns, most perhaps in Seattle, the largest and most affluent city in Washington state.

In the mid-1900's, around the early 1950s, the Seattle public school system was renown as the best in the nation - this was measured by its efficiency and its results: it produced better educated students than anywhere else in the nation for a number of years running.

In the late 1980's the University of Cambridge, on a research grant, made a study to determine where English was spoken most perfectly in the world, that is, with the least trace of accent. That place was determined to be Washington state. I would like you to ponder the significance of accent, as to class, clan, regionalism, and sociopolitical system (context) - as a mark of status within a power structure, as opposed to empowered (through education) individuals having no need to retain or assert such marks, making their way on the basis of individual merit. It seems a small matter, but it really is significant beyond most people's class-ridden ability to comprehend.

Of course, the lack of accent, in itself, signifies nothing, if that is merely what one's region/clan talks like. If the education degenerates, the population may retain - for a while - a lack of accent, which eventually becomes a regional accent of its own. But the roots of such clear-speaking derived from a superior educational system which resulted in unusually independent (free-thinking, self-sustaining) individuals, empowered thereby, and in a defacto meritocracy - at least for a while.

Such an education is capable of producing people who can think on their own, and who do not require the clan/group to back them up. They think capably, independently and clearly ... just as they speak clearly.

This effect, obviously, will not survive the introduction of statism over a very long period of time. Indeed, a few generations, at most. Especially not after the statist's take over education by destroying private facilities and making public schooling mandatory ... after that, it's no longer education, but simply brainwashing with some rudimentary reading skills (and empirical thinking skills, which allow people to adjust to slavery with a stunning lack of conscience).

So, when I say that I am still affected by the legacy of a long-past freedom that existed briefly and sporadically in this country, I mean that I went to school in the 1950's in Seattle, that, as I traveled around the globe in the 1990's, many people I met particularly pointed out that I spoke English more clearly than anyone they had encountered before (and, as one Taiwanese man put it, "You speak English the way it's written. You are easy to understand."), and that I became aware not only of my unusual speech, but was motivated to research it and understand what it signified.

I do not claim that I think more clearly in consequence of that legacy. I have been, for the most part, more independent in my thinking (and my life) than most people I have encountered. But my experience was transitional. The system was changing even as I was at school, and I was not a particularly bright or good student. I am recollecting vaguely that the "better" students were better at the new empirical line of teaching, at which I did badly.

Still, when you are talking about government educational institutions, from your own culturally statist background ... and thinking of freedom as an untried theory (economic or otherwise), bear in mind that there are still people wandering around - somewhat lost, if truth be told - who do not comprehend your background, nor accept as necessary your sociocultural premises, even as the whole world may presently appear to be engulfed by it.

I believe that you are exercising a powerful imagination, based largely upon reading visionary thinkers. And I applaud your efforts. You are certainly much brighter than I, who was simply "to the manor born and bred." For you, it requires much more effort and imagination. But, to the issue, the concept of "academic freedom" is not one that should be mindlessly accepted as a value, it implies/necessitates a context which is as vile as they come.

In a correspondence with Christian a few months ago, I made the comment in regard to another writer: "Institutional certification is, for the most part, a badge of dishonor. I tend to hold it against [X] that he has all of those institutional titles; it lessens him as a [thinking] human being.... I used to have a couple of chapters on academia somewhere in my books, but I removed them prior to publication ... too negative and unhelpful (and they sounded too much like sour grapes, which wasn't the case, but that's how academia interprets such commentary)."

The presumption is that it takes an Academe to meaningfully attack Academia (just, perhaps, as it takes a Jew to meaningfully attack Israel). Unfortunately, due to institutional brainwashing and inherently ineffectual education, the Academe is rarely capable of mounting a meaningful attack/analysis of his own abusive context except by empirical references to the comments of others (what Academia would term "anecdotal" data) ... which process (empiricism) they have been rigorously trained in - to the exclusion/suppression of actual thinking. Alas.

The initial part of your article is well presented, but the "Academic Freedom Revisited" is where something became muddled (you or I), and the muddle continued as you attempted (but did not succeed) in transitioning to the idea of exterritoriality. The problem that I see is that you want to eat your cake and still have it. You want things both ways. You won't let go of the statist premises; you just want to make them "voluntary," except in cases of emergencies - ? Whoa boy. Who owns your soul? You don't believe freedom will work without a statist safety-net, do you? And you think you are being very clever and innovative in finding a way to preserve your statist premises in the guise of freedom/liberty ... a thesis which will go over VERY well with other Europeans reared on similar sociocultural premises - for exactly the same reasons that communism had such great appeal/support in Europe, qua theory. But you cannot eat your cake and still have it. And no amount of empirical or dialectic wizardry will ever change that fact.

I empathize greatly with your sociocultural abuse/brainwashing, but no amount of cleverness will ever take the place of zapping contradictions (thinking). Wishing with all your might, just won't make it so. Alchemy, the eternal dream of Europeans, is not possible. Sorry.