Why Academic Freedom must suppress itself.

 The following definition of the subject of this post seems uncontroversial-

academic freedom guards the liberties of a professor in two broad areas:

1)  his right within the academic community to pursue and promulgate truth without restrictions or censorship from the University Administration, 

2)  and his right, in the public sphere, to enjoy the freedoms of association and expression which any citizen possesses. 

(1) is otiose. It is already covered by contract law. If I am hired as a member of a particular profession- be it Medicine or Accountancy or Pedagogy- it is understood that a breach of contract would arise if I were not permitted to do what right-minded members of my profession would do in the same situation.

2) is redundant. Everybody already possesses this right whether on not they practice a profession.

Clearly this definition of 'academic freedom' is meaningless.  We might as well speak of 'janitor's freedom' as consisting of
1) his right to clean up a pool of vomit rather than wait and get permission from the vomiter.
2) his right to go home and watch a bit of TV when his shift ends.

Why has such a worthless definition been offered? Let us see-

At the core of all issues of academic freedom is the question of tenure; it is the safeguard which allows a professor to to exercise his rights without fear of intimidation from either University or public officials.

This is foolish. What matters is not tenure but transfer earnings- if a person can get paid enough without loss of reputation by another employer, then no further safeguard is needed. If this is not the case, then no safeguard really exists, the University could find other ways to work its will. Moreover, there would be no genuine 'academic community' whom the Professor could address. There would be merely a bunch of needy and therefore pliable individuals whose more pressing concern would be the miseries of their lot rather than some abstract alethic project.

Professor Frank Donoghue argues-

The tenure system itself does more to constrain than to promote academic freedom. It may seem counterintuitive to argue that, but that position is now one to consider seriously. The American Federation of Teachers and former general secretary of the AAUP Roger Bowen have both recently made the same point. Consider too that academic freedom would matter only if professors had standing as public intellectuals, but that standing has never been more than a distant aspiration for us. If the public actually cared about what professors have to say, if academic speech and writing really influenced public opinion, then academic freedom would be important. People would either treasure the pronouncements of professors, and thus fight to sustain academic freedom, or they would fear the rhetorical power of professors, and thus try to deprive us of our special exemption from the obligations of employee loyalty, patriotism, and conventional thinking. The fact is that we’re not that important; therefore, the academic freedom we profess to stand for is unimportant too. The proof is that professors who are perceived as pushing the limits of academic freedom are punished on the most mind-numbingly procedural grounds, that is, in a way that focuses on their status as employees, ignoring their status as intellectuals. In other words, administrators can and do sidestep any ideological issues and challenge the “occupational” competence of professors whose opinions they find objectionable. They do so to remind professors that they are employees first and foremost.

Academic Freedom only becomes effectual if pedagogues have adequate transfer earnings in Industry- including the Service sector. But, in that case, Industry has the whip hand. The Academy will have to suppress inutile or absurd courses of instruction. It will be obliged to suppress its own more foolish availability cascades. In the short run, endowments or information asymmetry may provide a buffer. Long term, the freedom of the Academy must be suppressed if Academics are to enjoy freedom. The alternative is the whole thing degenerating into a cult.

Still, there will always appear to be an interregnum in which senile or Sen-tentious Professors can pose as battling some invidious 'Fascism' or 'Manufacture of Consent' by speaking 'Truth to Power' while actually defending only their own tenured cabal.

But, all too evidently, once Professors start talking this type of tripe, their Research Programs are dead in the water.

Why?

To be rigorous an Academic Research Program should be more selective of datum and to be productive it should have more 'variables' than the equivalent Public Discourse. Thus any alethic Academic activity will have fewer degrees of freedom than its Public Discourse counterpart.

Furthermore, if academics are independent, then some set of otherwise alethic Research Programs will nevertheless fail because of 'over-fitting'- i.e. their decomposition of Public Discourse variables is problematic. Ejected from the Academy these failed Programs get dammed up elsewhere in Public Discourse as capacitance diversity.

In other words, a 'free' and 'independent', ideal Academy will feature shakeouts and 'creative destruction' even of alethic Research Programs which continue to solve co-ordination or concurrency problems in the wider world. Thus, 'tenure' is a bad idea unless there is technological stagnation and the ageing process involves no diminution of mental powers.

Even if the Academy features Market Failure so extreme as to militate against adequate transfer earnings, there would be a Coasian solution such that the same feature reappears. In other words 'expulsion' and 'exclusion' and other narcissistic injuries enforcing Kantian heteronomy will be a more, not less, salient feature of the Enterprise of the Gown as opposed to the Town.

In recent years, some Academics, have suggested that Academic Freedom is as necessary as Judicial Freedom. Once appointed, an Academic must have security of tenure and emoluments and perquisites and so forth. This argument is obviously specious. Judges and Judges alone interpret laws for the whole of Society. The public is welcome to change those laws by pressurising the Legislature. Academics have no similar standing. A Professor, speaking generally, is stupider, more ignorant and of worse character than an expert practitioner or observer of the relevant field. We may listen to a Professor on TV speaking of some subject in which we have no real interest but we wholly disregard, or greet with derision, the pronouncements of Professors who teach subjects which affect us personally. Thus, I don't mind listening to some stupid Professor talking nonsense about Nicaragua on TV- because that is a country I have no interest in. I won't listen to a colleague of that same Professor talking nonsense about Brexit because Brexit affects me personally. If some Nicaraguan Professor comes on BBC and spouts nonsense about Brexit, I'll be outraged and lodge a complaint. Of course, there are some TV channels where only ideological nonsense is talked. That is a separate matter.

Suppose a mathesis universalis exists and some sub-set of Academics are guided to superior judgments on its basis. In this case, there is an argument for granting certain Academics an autonomous status similar to Judges. However, this would mean that Academics would be far less free than they are currently in the same way that Judges are less free when pronouncing judgment. Thus an Academic who knows that Brexit will be a disaster will be obliged to say 'There is no evidence that Brexit will be a disaster', just as a Judge has to pronounce a homicidal maniac innocent of murder because of some obscure point of law or procedural error.

There are two reasons why the Academy should have less freedom than Society at large-

1) It deals, at least in part, with alethic Research Programs for which algorithmic decision procedures are refined. Thus, its discourse needs to be more protocol bound

2) It deals with impressionable young people who face an information asymmetry problem.


Taken together, these two considerations explain why the Academy should always have less freedom than Society at large. It's fine if alchemists and astrologers are turfed out of the University along with some novel type of astronomy- like that of Galileo- provided Society at large has greater freedom to pick up that ball and run with it.

There may be Theological or Ideological or Legal objections to a particular Academic Research Program which is in fact alethic. These objections don't matter even if they result in an act of exclusion provided there is  some sector of Society which enjoys greater freedom than the University to find productive applications for that Program.

Conversely,  if the Academy has more freedom than the Society at large, it will have an incentive to uphold a Noble Lie doctrine which ultimately reduces freedom of thought for everybody. The same point may be made of a 'Bildungsburgertum', or Power Elite. If members of this class feel that their own freedom is only incentive compatible if the hoi polloi are subjected to a thought police, then both they and their Society ends up paying a higher price.

Obviously, when pedants speak of academic freedom they aren't talking about freedom of thought. They mean freedom from fear of the sack and/or criminal prosecution. This is perfectly natural.
Everybody wants a personal or class based immunity from Social conventions, Economic imperatives, and Civil and Criminal Laws. Pedagogues are no exception to this rule. However, because the Academy features a hegemonic relationship between elderly pedants and impressionable youngsters, it is important that more restrictions and safeguards be placed upon the Academy than upon Society at large. Where this does not happen, the intellectual capacity of both teacher and student declines because of incentive incompatibility and rent seeking behaviour.

Similarly, there is an asymmetry between the lethal force at the command of armed soldiers compared to civilians. This militates for greater restrictions on military personnel and a stronger code of obedience. Where this does not happen, sooner or later the Defence of the Nation is compromised.

Talking worthless shite is increasingly a profession. It is important that greater constraints be placed on the talking of worthless shite than upon worthwhile communication. Political correctness applies only to the former not the latter. Thus, if you shout 'Oi, fatty- your head is on fire', and I reply 'Fat shaming is Fascist!' and you say 'Listen, you big black sack of shit, your fucking head is on fire' and then I say 'Fuck, my fucking head is on fire- don't just stand there, gimme a golden shower quick you two bit ho-bag!', no breach of political correctness has occurred because communication was of an essentially worthwhile type. Also, it's the Office Christmas do for fuck's sake and when I say 'you' I mean me and when I say me I mean that slut of a photocopier on the third floor.
There is no truth to the allegation that I pissed upon it as part of an escalating cycle of depraved sexual harassment but, rather, only did so for the life-saving reason previously mentioned.

Academic freedom must be suppressed. What is important is that Filing Clerks like me get tenure so that we are free to develop innovative ways of dealing with threats to the integrity of Corporate information. Our civilization depends on proper filing and record keeping. Slutty photocopiers on the third floor need to be pissed on regularly, otherwise everybody just ends up Xeroxing their genitals on it and then faxing the result to Head Office.