By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.
— Albert Einstein
Viral Academic Freedom quotations
By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right also implies a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.
The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!
I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint - no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided...
It is completely in accord with the etatist thinking prevalent everywhere today to consider a theory to be finally disposed of merely because the authorities who control appointments to academic positions, want to know nothing of it, and to see the criterion of truth in the approval of a government office.
Build your schools around concepts, not academic subjects: core concepts such as awareness, honesty, responsibility, freedom and diversity in oneness. Teach your children these things and you will have taught them grandly.
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn.
All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
Academic freedom is being lost by a great many people who dare to challenge Darwinism. That's a terrifying situation. That's contrary to the principles of science.
I want you to have all the academic freedom you want as long as you wind up saying the bible account (of creation) is true and all others are not.
It's a good thing that we're protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public.
When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good.
Yes, it is hard out there. But hard is relative. I come from a middle-class family, my parents are academics. I was born after the Civil Rights movement, I was a toddler during the women's movement, I live in the United States of America, all of which means I am allowed to own my freedom, my rights, my voice and my uterus.
While the universities are increasingly corporatized and militarized, their governing structures are becoming more authoritarian, faculty are being devalued as public intellectuals, students are viewed as clients, academic fields are treated as economic domains for providing credentials, and work place skills, and academic freedom is under assault.
In Britain the power of authority was weakened.
There was much more individual freedom and there was great academic freedom.
MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value.
Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.
Can a geology teacher blithely tell his students that the earth is flat, or a European history professor that the Holocaust didn't happen? That's not academic freedom, but dereliction of duty.
Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry.
To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results.
The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool.
I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats.
There are, however, many challenges to Asian universities.
First, academic freedom, in all senses, is much more critical to the success of a university than how much money is spent on infrastructure or on hiring big names. Faculty need to have the space to pursue the research that they are passionate about and the also need to have the freedom to express their opinions in the university, and in the society as a whole.
There's actually a wonderful quote from Stanley Fish, who is sometimes very polemical and with whom I don't always agree. He writes, "Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right."
Freedom of speech is about expressing your opinion, however bad or good, however right or wrong, and being able to defend it and argue it and be argued with about it in public forums. But that's not what academic freedom is about. That's not what the classroom is about.
The university is the place where the pursuit of truth is taught, the rules for learning how to pursue it are explained, and students begin to understand how to evaluate the seriousness of truth. Those are incredibly important lessons, and only the teachers' academic freedom can protect them because there will always be people who disagree with or disapprove of the ideas they are trying to convey.
To the extent that tenure supports academic freedom, I support tenure.
I want no person or system to have any power, real or apparent, to chill academic freedom.
To the extent that tenure supports academic freedom, I support tenure.
I want no person or system to have any power, real or apparent, to chill academic freedom.