LEFTFIELD:Academic freedom ensures the development of ideas and robust debate, but how far should academics stray outside their own specialist subject?, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

ACADEMIC freedom is not perhaps a common topic of national debate, but over the past year or so there has been an unusual amount of public interest in what it means. Last summer, the case of a UCC lecturer who claimed his academic freedom was being compromised was widely covered in the media. He had been disciplined by the college when he had shown an article on fellatio by fruitbats to a colleague who was made uncomfortable by the encounter.

This was how he argued his case to UCC’s management: “There are broader issues of academic freedom at stake here. If we cannot discuss scientific articles about topics directly related to our own research, published in leading peer-reviewed international journals, with colleagues in the same department, this bodes very ill for informed enquiry and debate.”

At around the same time, in the US, a professor was fired by his university when, in a lecture course on Introduction to Catholicism, he had set out the Roman Catholic church’s position on homosexuality. He stated that the church (whose doctrines he supported) viewed homosexual practice as “morally wrong”. Some students objected to his statements, and the university terminated his appointment. He argued that this was a violation of his academic freedom. After a fair amount of heated public debate, he was eventually reinstated.

The expression in class of religious dogma can be a problem, as was also discovered a few years ago in UCD, when a lecturer was alleged to have persuaded students to attend Opus Dei events. UCD ordered an internal inquiry and the lecturer in question retired early on grounds of ill-health.

Now we have a debate on academic freedom prompted by the 160 academics who signed a letter published in this newspaper on January 20th, and by the meeting that took place at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin on January 22nd to warn that academic freedom was under threat due to the implementation of the Croke Park agreement.

Is academic freedom, as those who attended the meeting asserted, the foundation of a free and democratic society in which the benefits of knowledge and inquiry are available to all? Or is it, as some others have argued, a bit of outdated special pleading by a profession that is not keeping up with technological, cultural and social change, and which wants to protect its special privileges?

In Ireland we have a statutory definition of academic freedom, contained in the Universities Act 1997, and which runs as follows:

“A member of the academic staff of a university shall have the freedom, within the law, 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.”

Academic freedom, so understood, is there to ensure that academics can develop ideas or argue against the ideas of others without fearing that they will be penalised for doing so.

While it may seem easy to map out the terrain in which academic freedom operates, it can raise complex problems in practice. If we accept that an academic may hold, develop and disseminate unorthodox or controversial views, does this right refer only to views that we might regard as “expert” views, ie, related to his or her expertise or discipline, or does it have a broader remit?

If my field is organic chemistry, are my views on corporate banking protected by academic freedom? If they are, why should my views on this be given greater standing than the views of non-academic members of the public? And if my views are covered by academic freedom, does this mean (as the UCC lecturer in the fruitbat case seems to have suggested) that I have a legal right to express them to someone who doesn’t want to hear them?

Academic freedom also raises difficult issues in the context of higher education reform. The Hunt Report only refers to academic freedom twice, both times in passing and without any consideration if its significance. But the report raised a number of questions about the extent to which universities should be co-ordinated with a view to ensuring that their programmes and their research are compatible with national political and economic priorities.

In the eyes of many lecturers, this may mean that the ability of academics to choose and stick to their own preferred topics in their work may be compromised. But then again, in the eyes of the government, and perhaps the wider public, insisting on individual academic autonomy may seem hard to justify when the country needs to focus on its main opportunities for recovery.

Most people will agree that academic freedom is central not just to our system of higher education, but to our concept of a free society. But as it has taken centre stage, we may be finding that we don’t really have a very clear view of what it means and in what way it needs to be protected. It is manifestly in the public interest that society has available to it a fund of informed analysis and critique; but it also needs to be assured that this will not be abused. It is important that the academic community engages with the wider public on this, and that it should not create the impression that it is mainly interested in protecting its own vested interests.

And it is important that the wider public should understand that without genuine academic freedom we are unlikely to have a free society.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is a former president of DCU