Academic freedom on campus

Academic freedom on campus

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): When academic freedom was officially introduced
into Indonesian universities in 1988, there was quite a lot of
excitement and confusion throughout the country. Many university
students thought, for instance, that with the introduction of
academic freedom in our universities, it had become permissible
to discuss domestic political issues within the campus. They were
wrong. Discussion of domestic political problems as a part of
formal academic life within the university was and still is a
taboo.

What is "academic freedom"?

According to Arthur Lovejoy, it is the freedom of teachers or
researchers to examine and discuss issues in their fields of
specialization and to express their findings, either through
publications or through lectures, without any intervention by
political or religious authorities or by the institution which
employs them, except when the methods employed are considered by
authorized academic bodies within each specialization as
deficient or contradicting professional ethics.

It is clear from this definition that academic freedom is a
privilege reserved only for those working for the advancement of
knowledge. Those without such an assignment have no business
meddling with the implementation of academic freedom.

According to one source, academic freedom was exemplified for
the first time by Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Jewish-Dutch
philosopher who earned a living as a lens grinder. In 1673, he
received an invitation from the University of Heidelberg to
become a professor in philosophy. It was stated in this offer
that he would enjoy ample freedom in developing and teaching his
philosophical system (philosophandi libertatem amplissimum), as
long as he did not "misuse this freedom and disturb the religious
system which has already been established within the society".
Spinoza declined the offer. He did not believe he would really be
given full freedom of thought in his new position. He chose to
live as a lens grinder, where he could enjoy true "academic
freedom", rather than as a university professor with only limited
freedom. He seemed to reason that limited freedom was not true
freedom.

According to another account, the issue of academic freedom
came up for the first time in the United States. In 1653, Henry
Dunster was fired from his job as dean of Harvard College because
he opposed the practice of christening children. Members of the
Board of Trustees of Harvard College looked upon this conduct as
a sign of "unhealthy faith". As a consequence, in 1654, the state
of Massachusetts passed a law which forbade the appointment of
those with unhealthy faith or those with moral defects as
teachers. Thus, Henry Dunster was fired not because he was
academically incompetent, but because he deviated from the
mainstream view in his religious outlook. It was not until 1738
that Harvard University corrected this mistake, and began to
honor the principle of academic freedom. In this year, John
Winthrop was appointed by the Board of Trustees as professor in
mathematics and philosophy of science, even though it was
publicly known that he was holding heterodox religious views.

I think that each of the above accounts tells a different side
of the same story. Spinoza was portrayed in the first account as
the positive exhibit of academic freedom, while the firing of
Henry Dunster revealed the negative side of academic freedom.

But no matter how we look at this problem, it has been
generally agreed that academic freedom was the product of a
cultural transmutation process which took place in Europe between
1500-1650.

It was during this period that people in Europe started to
question the validity of the church doctrines in dealing with
cultural and social phenomena. New thought patterns emerged which
were responsible later for the birth of new cultural and
intellectual forces: the Renaissance (Italian humanism),
Reformation (German humanism) and Counter-reformation. It was the
interactions among these three "modes of thought" which changed
the cultural panorama of Europe, which later had come to be known
as the "cultural transmutation" of Europe.

One of the basic characteristics of this new style of thinking
was the rejection of the learning system developed and passed on
by the past generations. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) said that the
old knowledge was like a dark forest which inflicted wounds on
those who entered into it, and could not provide any nutritious
material for the development of fresh and vigorous thought.

The new European man was looking for new ways of learning, for
new ways of thinking that would enable them to better understand
the phenomena and problems of life. This new European man put
reason above doctrines in his search for truth, and stressed the
importance of imagination in his search for beauty.

It has generally been agreed that academic freedom succeeded
in Europe to invigorate scientific and academic life. This
freedom made possible new discoveries and new inventions. Without
this freedom, many innovations would never have happened. It is
on the basis of experience gained during this historical period
that the maxim of freedom of thought as a prerequisite for
scientific progress has been established.

Indonesia introduced this principle of academic freedom with
the hope that it would give additional impetus to intellectual
life within universities. It was hoped that by giving lecturers
and researchers the freedom they needed in carrying out their
professional assignments, they would become more productive, and
advancement of knowledge would take place.

This hope was never fully fulfilled, however. At best, the
result has been very sporadic. In certain institutions, progress
has been visible. However, in the majority of cases, our
universities and research institutions have not been able to
benefit from this freedom.

In one of the seminars I attended some years ago, one lecturer
explained that the lack of real progress of academic life in our
universities was caused primarily by the overwhelming presence of
"academic fear" among lecturers and researchers. According to
this lecturer, there are so many real problems in our society
that can easily be exploited as vehicles for scientific study.

But the academic fear that prevails among our academe has
prevented them from studying and analyzing such problems. Thus,
all these problems remain unattended and unsolved. What is the
use of institutionalizing academic freedom if people are afraid
to think independently?

It should be remembered in this regard that according to
Lovejoy, the principle of academic freedom rests upon two
assumptions. First, that scientific knowledge is not static and
merely accumulative, but that it is a chain of interrelated
efforts to attain new knowledge, and that the old knowledge is
required to adjust itself continuously to new developments.

Second, that the probability of obtaining truth will be
greater whenever there is interaction among different and even
contradictory ideas which emerge from independent thinking; that
truth will never be attained through the practice of
superimposing uniform and standard ideas on others.

According to Jean-Pierre Faye, an example of such practice is
the phenomenon of "totalitarian language", or a situation in
which all official terminologies can have only one meaning:
meaning formulated by the establishment. Any other interpretation
must be regarded as subversive.

Another explanation that has also been given for the lack of
positive impact of academic freedom on our universities is that
academic freedom is a Western principle alien to our culture.
This school of thought maintains that academic freedom is the
problem of Western society, Western universities and Western
scholars. We Indonesians can advance our knowledge and promote
our understanding of the world without academic freedom. "Isn't
this a tragedy?" asked the lecturer, who made this remark.

While we are still searching for the best way of implementing
academic freedom in our culture, academic life in advanced
societies has taken on a new turn. Whereas in the beginning,
academic freedom was needed to safeguard academic pursuit from
non-academic intervention, since the late 1960s, this freedom has
been abused to create what has been called "pseudoscientism" and
"antiscientism".

Prof. Mario Bunge of McGill University maintains that "many
universities have been infiltrated, though not yet seized, by the
enemies of learning, rigor and empirical evidence: those who
proclaim that there is no objective truth, whence `anything
goes'; those who pass off political opinion as science and engage
in bogus scholarship."

He mentioned two products of these kinds of activities:
academic pseudoscience and academic antiscience. Examples of
academic pseudoscience are pseudomathematical symbolism (Vilfredo
Pareto), subjective probability, and "scientific" racism
(psychologist Arthur Jensen of Harvard, 1969), among others.
Examples of academic antiscience include, among others things,
phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology, and radical
feminist theory.

Prof. Bunge maintains further that antiscience and
pseudoscience are the products of "willful or postmodern
ignorance", or the deliberate refusal to learn items relevant to
one's interests. Willful or postmodern ignorance can come in two
guises: naked or naive, and disguised or contrived. This type of
ignorance should not be confused with "natural or traditional
ignorance", which is unavoidable and is part of being a curious
learner and an honest teacher.

The danger of antiscience and pseudoscience is that they are
authoritarian. Prof. Bunge cited Karl Popper, who said half a
century ago that authoritarianism is incompatible with
rationalism in the broad sense, i.e. "the readiness to listen to
critical arguments and to learn from experience".

Rationality is thus a necessary component of democratic life,
where the citizen is supposed to form his or her own opinions on
matters of public interest, to discuss them in public, and to
participate to some extent in the management of the society.

For the purpose of protecting the society from the damage that
can be caused by antiscience and pseudoscience, Prof. Bunge
proposes the adoption of the Charter of Intellectual Academic
Rights and Duties, consisting of 10 principles. Some parts of
this proposed charter are as follows:

* Every academic has the right to make mistakes and the duty to
correct them upon detecting them.

* Every academic has the duty to express himself in the clearest
possible way.

* Every academic has the right to discuss any unorthodox views
that interest him, provided those views are clear enough to be
discussed rationally.

* Nobody has the right to engage knowingly in any academic
industry.

* Every academic body has the duty to adopt and enforce the most
rigorous known standards of scholarship and learning.

* Every academic body has the duty to be intolerant to both
counterculture and counterfeit culture.

Thus, the time has come, according to Prof. Bunge, for
scientists and academicians to no longer fix their attention
solely on the right to academic freedom, but they must begin to
think of their responsibilities and duties to protect their
society and their fellow citizens from the abuses of science.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.