On academic freedom, politics and economics

A recent Irish Times article by Professor Emeritus William Reville brought up the topic of academic freedom. It provoked a negative reaction from some. His examples of political threats to academic freedom are rather cherrypicked, focusing on totalitarian governments of the more left-wing variety when discussing historical examples of political interference in academics' work, as well as the more recent trend of "no-platforming" speakers on campus.

Notwithstanding the rather biased overview of some potential threats to academic freedom, he cites the following rather more generic/objective material from the Irish Universities Act about what Irish law protects as academic freedom:

"A member of the academic staff of a university shall have the freedom, within the law (my emphasis), in his or her teaching, research and any other activities either in or outside the university, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions and shall not be disadvantaged, or subject to less favourable treatment by the university, for the exercise of that freedom."

Although I rather get the vibe some people outside the "ivory tower" may think otherwise (or have a more absolutist view of what citizens' freedom of speech constitutes than it actually does), my understanding is that academic freedom does not place you above the law, and so it doesn't grant you some special right to speech acts that are otherwise denied to the average citizen. It's not a licence to racially abuse a student, make lewd remarks to a colleague, send a general email inviting people to beat up protesters as a violent counter protest, flog a product that doesn't work, flout a confidentiality agreement, etc. etc. Hate speech is not an area I'm authoritative on, but if certain speech acts are banned by the government as hate speech, then academic freedom does not cover this either.

Although left-right political divides can become very heated and divisive (and thus make better copy), I think a more prevalent threat to academic freedom (which Reville also discusses later in his article) is the need for research to be applied rapidly. Although the taxpayer funds a certain amount of research in universities with little obvious economic gain, at least in the short-medium run, funding bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) place a large emphasis on industry collaboration. The resultant increase in the number of collaborations between industry and universities has led to great success in terms of economic metrics (€5 for every €1 invested in research in the university sector, says SFI). However, this raises hard questions about the independence of such research, its broader intellectual contribution, and its benefit to broader society if the benefits are privatised.

The statement from the Irish Universities Act above tellingly refers to less favourable treatment by the university when it comes to choice of research question. With so much matched funding being provided to those who engage more with industry, researchers who focus on more "blue skies" research questions may have concerns about being treated equally by the university sector with regard to outcomes such as career advancement. University researchers are thus likely to feel constrained in their choice of research question if there is no clear short- to medium-run economic gain.

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