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.