Academic Freedom in the UK (Wolff)

The Times Higher Education Supplement today leads with the story that in a survey "some 38 per cent of professors, 45 per cent of senior lecturers and 36 per cent of lecturers said that their academic freedom was under attack."

I wonder whether this is like one of those "80% of 12 year olds smoke, drink, take drugs and have sex every day" polls. Earlier this week I got an email from the journalist who was then writing up the story, asking me if I wanted to comment on the results. I started to reply saying how astonishing I found this, but then thought that I might be missing something and so deleted the email and continued to ponder, which I am still doing, but now in public. Journalistic deadlines and due consideration are not always compatible, sadly.

So, is my academic freedom under threat? Within my research, the only thing limiting my freedom of expression is journal editors turning down my papers the *&%^%& @£@%s, which I don't think counts. I did play a minor role in an empirical study under a consultancy contract which the client has declined to allow to be published, for reasons of commercial confidentiality. But this was agreed as a possibility in advance. I also had a protracted discussion with one organisation about what could or could not go into a newspaper article, but that was not so much censorship as my not wanting to say things that could not be substantiated. What else? Contrary to the comments on one of my earlier posts I don't promote views conventionally regarded as racist, sexist, or homophobic, and so the attempts to silence people in these areas has not affected me, and I cannot believe that it has affected all that many others either. I suppose I would feel rather inhibited in criticising my own university in public, unless, of course, I had very good reason, but I don't think I would have felt any differently 10 years ago.

In my own department the only issue that seems to have come up is when a student society objected to the arguments a retired member of staff posted on his university webspace, and I was caught in the middle of a rather squalid little squabble. Academic freedom won, hands down, but still I suppose that this does count as an attack on it. But the same person was being attacked for his views 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 30 years ago, so no change there.

Do other UK academics have different experiences? And what about elsewhere in the world?

Comments

[Stefan]

I do find the results of the survey rather surprising. Coming from the US system where I did my PhD and taught during the last two years of the doctoral programme, I've found the UK system much preferrable in terms of 'academic freedom issues'. In fact, the tangible fear and sense of having to watch what was being said - at least in the areas of politics and international relations - is something I've not come across over here. It was most definitely downhill from 9/11 onwards.

It would be interesting to see precisely what kind of issues the respondents felt impinged on their academic freedom. Granted, the managerial 'culture' and red tape is rather mind-numbing at times in the UK system but I would think that academics in the US are exposed to far greater populist pressures on what can and can't be said regarding research, especially in 'sensitive' areas like, say, security studies, US foreign policy, terrorism, etc. Perhaps this survey indicates academic suffocation by administration, rather than the McCarthyesque impingements of academic freedom that are prevalent in the US?

[Toni]

I would like to hear your comments on other kind of academic freedom issues: feminist thought police, for instance. Could something similar that happened to Larry Summers at Harvard happen in the UK, too?

[Brian]

What "happened to Larry Summers" did not raise academic freedom issues, as was discussed here some time ago:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/02/academic_freedo.html

It also did not involve any make-believe creatures like "feminist thought police," though it did involve actual scientists objecting to Summers's ignorance.

Jo, please do not let this thread get derailed!

[Chris Bertram]

One possible explanation is that people feel pressured to direct their research in ways that will have a definite RAE payoff and don't feel at liberty to set their own research priorities, etc. Outside of the humanities there may also be pressures to adapt to the needs of so-called "stakeholders".

[Jo Wolff]

I would also add that the controversy about the union-proposed boycott of Israeli academics has led to a sense that increasing political interference is on its way, and that sense would affect people for whom the Israel issue makes no practical difference.

[John Gardner]

I doubt whether those surveyed shared a common ideal of academic freedom. Some British academics seem to think it's an inhibition on their academic freedom if they can't play golf on Wednesday afternoons, or if they have to fill in annual reports on their students. A narrower (but still too broad) account of academic freedom might portray it as an inhibition on academic freedom to have to publish examples of one's work periodically, or at any rate more often than every five years. Personally I would think of it as an inhibition on my academic freedom only if I felt under pressure concerning the topics I work on or the arguments and theses I advance about them. I can see that some people working in the sciences and the social sciences are possibly coming under more pressure like this because of the need to raise project funding for their work. This will only get worse with so-called 'Full economic cost recovery' which will tend to take the research element out of core salary and make it depend much more on project funding. But speaking as a humanities person I can't claim ever to have felt under any pressure at all on any of these fronts. I have hosted conferences, written blog entries, and done media work in which I lined up with many unpopular causes. I have also criticised my own university very publicly. I have written on topics from the arcane to the topical without the slightest whiff of disapproval. Am I one of the lucky (powerful) ones?

[Mike Otsuka]

It sounds like many academics need to learn how to spot the difference between "academic freedom" and "freedom of the academic".

[Thom Brooks]

I agree with Mike Otuska and, most especially, with John Gardner. It is true that there are RAE pressures to publish...but the requirement is less than one article (or should I say "output"...?) per year. That's nothing. A bigger worry is clearly the ridiculous onset of full economic costing, which I simply can't stand (and argue against here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=907439 ), and the need (esp in social sciences) to attract greater funding. Yet, I must say that I too have never felt constrained at all on *what* I write about. I only feel constrained by the admin thrown my way....