Page 6 - Professorial Lecture - Professor P van Rooyen

There are various arguments for the value of academic freedom. But, does
academic freedom contribute to society's common good? Does it authorize
professors to critique the status quo, both inside and outside the university?
Does it license and even require the overturning of all received ideas and
policies? Is it an engine of revolution? Are academics inherently different
from other professionals? Or is academia just a job, and academic freedom
merely a tool for doing that job?

The main characteristic of academic freedom is the principle and practice of
extending open intellectual enquiry, through open, critical discourse and
credible research. In this regard, the construct of ‘academic freedom’ is an
important constitutive part of the wider construct of liberty and requires
political and social conditions conducive for it to be fully realized (Du Pisani,
2015).

There can also be a fallacy in this idealised approach, as in some cases,
universities may become so highly academic that they are useless for real
life. Some academics build elaborate structures and never live in them,
neither does anybody. In the end these structures just gather dust and
eventually collapse.

2. The vision of the university as a political instrument is based on the notion
of serving the interests of society as defined by the political system (Kerr,
1963). The legitimacy of the university is in its use-value, comparable to
other instruments, and focus is on authoritarian administration, societal
alignment, rigid rules and strong hierarchies. Fish (2014) locates a
fundamental tension between our professional duties (the regulatory
powers and protocols of the “guild”) and broad legal and political
responsibilities (civil rights and liberties). Fish unashamedly registers himself
in the category of “professional correctness”. At the other extreme is Denis
Rancourt, for whom “academic squatting” (which cost him his job at the
University of Ottawa) involves proposing a class in physics but then teaching
political activism instead. The core of the argument must surely rest on the
proper regulation between academic integrity and civil engagement.

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