academic freedom Archives - ABHE Knowledge Center

Academic Freedom

The right, without constriction by prescribed doctrine, to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing the results thereof, freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, freedom from institutional censorship. UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, 1997. Academic freedom under threat? James Caspian, a counsellor who specialises in therapy for transgender people, was refused permission by an ethics committee at Bath Spa University to investigate why growing numbers of people are choosing to ‘detransition’. This was on the grounds that the resulting material could be ‘detrimental to the reputation of the university’.

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Faith Statements Impinge on Academic Freedom? A Response to the Canadian Association of University Teachers

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is engaged in a project of blacklisting several Canadian Christian universities that require their faculty to sign a statement of faith as a condition of employment. In this article I set out and defend three reasons for thinking that CAUT should stop its project. Reason 1: CAUT’s blacklisting project thwarts academic freedom broadly conceived. Reason 2: CAUT’s blacklist relies on a philosophical assumption that purports to promote academic freedom but is actually a case of academic bullying. Reason 3: CAUT’s crucial claim—that a Christian school’s requirement for faculty to subscribe to a statement of faith means that such schools “cannot be practicing academic freedom”—is in an important sense false.

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