The Tensions of Academic Freedom as a Practice in the 21st Century

Academic freedom is currently under attack in the United States. I analyze the different forms this attack has taken — on regulatory science, on basic science, on the universities, and argue that they reveal that academic freedom is not one thing, but a complex set of practices, which are not always in concord with one another. Indeed, one of the main lines of attack has been to leverage one form of academic freedom — the relative autonomy of basic scientists to define what lines of research are worthy of funding — against another, namely the freedom of academics to study and teach even controversial topics. I offer a brief history of the relative autonomy of basic science and argue that it needs to be rethought. The second part of the paper looks at attempts to define academic freedom by distinguishing it clearly from freedom of expression in the public sphere. I argue that this neat separation — which harks back to Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” — is hard to maintain in the 21st century, when expertise is contested, and social media blurs the line between the lecture hall and the public sphere. Practicing academic freedom now requires adapting our practices to 21st-century realities.